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THE 


GUIDE-BOARD 


TO 


HEALTH,  PEACE  AND  COMPETENCE; 


OR, 


THE  ROAD  TO  HAPPY  OLD  AGE. 


BY 

W.  W.^HALL,  M.D.,  NEW  YORK, 

AUTHOR  OP  "  SOLDIER  HEALTH,"  "  SLEEP,"  "  JOUBNAL  op  HEALTH,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


Hen  consume  too  much  food,  and  too  little  pure  air ; 
They  take  too  much  medicine,  and  too  little  exercise. 


SOLD  ONLY  BY  SUBSCRIPTION. 


SPRINGFIELD,  MASS.: 
D.    E.    FISK    AND    COMPANY. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
CRITTENDEN   &  MeKINNEY, 

1308   CHESTNUT   STREET. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1869,  by 

D.  E.   FISK   &    CO., 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts 


Stereotyped  at  tht  Boston  Stereotype  Foundry, 
10  Spring  Lane. 


NOTE. 


KNOWING  that,  to  a  very  great  extent,  the  life  of  each 
human  being  is  in  his  own  hands,  that  it  is  his  duty  to 
guard  it  with  watchful  care,  that  "  it  is  worth  the  effort 
of  a  lifetime  to  die  well,"  and  having  witnessed  many 
living  evidences  of  the  treatment  of  the  celebrated  author, 
we  have  been  induced,  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  to  bring 
this  book  before  the  public,  firm  in  the  belief  that  we 
shall  receive  the  patronage  it  merits,  and  the  "  Well  done  " 


of  our  fellow-beings. 


PUBLISHERS. 


Will  37 


PREFACE. 


THE  first  and  immediate  aim  of  the  good  and  great  phy- 
sician, is  to  restore  his  patient  to  health  in  the  shortest 
time,  with  the  smallest  amount  of  medicine,  and  with  the 
least  discomfort  practicable.  When  this  is  accomplished,  he 
has  a  more  elevated  ambition ;  an  object  nobler  and  still 
more'  humane  presses  upon  his  attention  —  THE  PREVENTION 
OF  ALL  DISEASES.  It  is  hard  enough  to  get  along  in  this 
world  when  a  man  is  well ;  but  to  have  to  make  a  living 
under  the  depressing  influence  of  sickness,  and  pain,  and 
suffering,  is  worse  than  having  to  climb  a  steep  clay  bank 
in  wet  weather.  Old  age  is  comfortless  enough  of  itself; 
but  to  be  old,  and  full  of  aches  and  pains,  and  gout  and 
rheumatism,  is  dreadful  to  think  of.  To  prevent  the  young 
from  getting  sick,  to  enable  all  to  grow  old  gracefully, 
with  a  heart  full  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  a  genial 
smile  and  a  pleasant  word  for  everybody,  and  to  go  down 
to  the  grave  "  like  as  a  shock  of  corn  fully  ripe  in  his  sea- 
son,"—  these  are  the  main  objects  of  this  book. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


THE    GUIDE-BOARD. 


THE    BIBLE. 

THE  Bible  is  of  divine  origin.  Its  Author  is  God.  He  did 
not  write  it  himself.  He  dictated  it.  He  influenced  good 
men  to  write  it.  He  caused  a  desire  of  writing  to  come  over 
them,  and  they  wrote,  as  we  are  impelled  to  write  letters  to 
kindred  and  dear  friends,  far  away,  by  some  vivid  remem- 
brance of  them.  Under  such  circumstances  we  may  write 
what  is  not  true ;  but  holy  men  of  old  wrote  as  they  were 
moved  by  the  Almighty  Mind,  who  could  not  have  moved 
them  to  write  one  syllable  which  was  not  strictly  true  in  all 
its  bearings. 

God  is  the  author  of  one  book  —  THE  BIBLE;  man,  of 
many.  His  book  needed  no  second  edition,  because  it  con- 
tained all  that  was  necessary  to  be  known  on  the  great  sub- 
ject of  which  it  treated ;  and  all  it  did  communicate  was 
true,  without  any  admixture  of  error. 

Not  so  with  the  work  of  man.  No  sooner  is  it  written 
than  he  discovers  mortifying  errors  and  inaccuracies,  and 
he  alters  and  amends  until  he  dies.  As  years  pass  on,  and 
as  .human  knowledge  progresses,  even  our  standard  scien- 
tific works  are  found  to  have  less  and  less  of  truth,  more  and 
more  of  error.  Not  so  with  the  holy  volume.  It  is  the 
very  reverse.  Progressive  years,  and  ages,  and  millennials 
are  evolving  new  truths,  in  proportion  as  it  is  more  closely 
studied.-  It  takes  for  granted,  speaks  of  as  a  familiar  thing, 
passing  before  the  mind's  eye  of  writers,  thousands  of  years 
ago,  what  is  new  to  us  this  very  Anno  Domini  eighteen 

(7)' 


8  THE  BIBLE. 

hundred  and  sixty-nine.  Assertions  made  in  the  earlier  ages 
of  the  world's  history  as  to  what  had  been,  was  then,  and 
would  be,  are  even  now  being  verified  by  facts,  which  the 
current  history  of  events  is  constantly  eliminating. 

Among  these  biblical  assertions  are  —  that  less  remote  than 
the  earth's  creation  was  that  of  living  creatures ;  at  a  later 
date,  plants ;  and  later  still  was  man,  a  few  thousand  years 
ago  only.  The  laborious  researches  of  geology  afford  us,  at 
length,  and  recently,  this  demonstration. 

The  surface  of  the  earth,  for  the  depth  of  eight  or  ten 
miles,  is  ascertained  to  be  composed  of  rocks.  Very  low 
down,  these  rocks  contain  the  remains  of  no  living  thing, 
whether  of  animal,  plant,  or  man.  At  a  less  depth,  various 
animal  relics  are  found  to  the  number  of  thirty  thousand 
different  kinds ;  and  this  side,  there  are  countless  vegetable 
fossils  ;  but  among  them  no  remains,  however  small,  of  any 
human  creature,  have  ever  been  discovered.  But  the  bones  of 
animals  and  men  are  of  the  same  structure,  and  of  the  same 
constituents,  and  would  endure  equally  long  under  the  same 
conditions  ;  but  as  not  a  single  human  bone  is  found  among 
these  thirty  thousand  kinds  of  fossil  remains  of  animal  life, 
we  are  perfectly  sure  that  animals  lived  before  man,  as  is  de- 
clared in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis.  But  it  is  only  within  a 
few  years  that  the  materials  for  this  most  impregnable  argu- 
ment have  been  gathered. 

Further,  among  these  relics  of  breathing  life,  in  the  far 
back  ages,  when  chaos  reigned,  and  impenetrable  darkness 
brooded  in  silent  grandeur  over  the  planet  on  which  we  now 
dwell,  there  are  no  remains  of  vegetation,  not  a  leaf,  or  twig, 
or  tree,  because  they  could  not  grow  in  darkness ;  hence  we 
find  that  these  remains  are  at  a  less  depth  still :  and  even 
among  these  there  is  not  one  single  relic  of  humanity.  Thus 
it  is  that  the  Bible  declares,  with  beautiful  and  amazing  accu- 
racy, that  the  waters  existed  in  darkness,  that  light  came, 
then  vegetation  appeared,  in  the  order  of  grass,  and  herb,  and 
tree,  precisely  as  is  observed  in  our  own  time,  in  the  reclaimed 
lands  at  the  mouths  of  great  rivers,  of  which  the  Mississippi 
is  a  familiar  illustration. 

After  reptiles,  and  fishes,  and  vegetation,  and  animals,  Man 
came.  Thus  it  is  that  his  remains  are  found  but  a  short  dis- 


THE  BIBLE. 

tance  under  ground,  in  the  Alluvium,  the  "  filling  up  "  of  the 
last  hundred  feet  of  the  earth's  surface,  Avhich,  of  necessity, 
must  have  been  of  comparatively  recent  occurrence. 

In  this  way  the  accumulated  acquisitions  of  science,  cul- 
minating in  a  point,  in  the  middle  of  this  nineteenth  century, 
demonstrate  the  truth  of  a  Bible  statement,  made  six  thou- 
sand years  ago,  and  which  very  few  of  us,  until  within  the 
last  forty  years,  thought  possible  of  proof.  That  the  tele- 
graph and  steam-car  were  foreshadowed  in  the  same  far-seeing 
record,  admits  of  but  little  doubt.  Twenty-five  hundred 
years  ago,  Nahum  (ii.  4)  wrote  of  chariots  seeming  like 
torches,  and  that  they  should  run  like  the  lightning,  with  ter- 
rible collisions  in  the  highways ;  and  earlier  still,  by  near  a 
thousand  years,  Job  (xxxviii.  35)  inquires  if  the  lightnings 
could  be  sent  to  convey  intelligence?  —  three  milleunials  pass 
away,  and  Morse  responds,  "THEY  CAN  ! " 

It  must,  then,  strike  the  reader,  with  great  force,  that  a 
book  so  minutely,  so  grandly  accurate,  in  the  use  of  scientific 
truths  of  one  class,  is  equally  worthy  of  reliance  on  all  other 
subjects  ;  and  that  whatever  it  announces  must  be  founded  on 
eternal  truth  —  consequently,  can  be  leaned  on  with  most 
perfect  safety ;  and  therefore,  as  to  whatever  it  may  say  as  to 
practical  life,  should  be  far  more  eagerly  sought  for  than  that 
fabled  Philosopher's  Stone  which  was  to  turn  all  it  touched 
into  the  finest  gold.  What  are  the  Bible  teachings  as  to  hu- 
man health?  He  who  lives  wisely  shall  live  long  —  ''shall 
come  to  his  grave  in  a  full  age,  like  as  a  shock  of  corn  cometJi 
in  his  season." 

What  is  it,  then,  to  live  wisely  ?  Let  that  same  conservative 
volume  reply,  in  its  own  identical  language,  when  it  declares 
a  conceded  fact  as  to  the  means  of  attaining  physical  perfec- 
tion, and  power,  and  skill.  "  Every  man  that  strivethfor  the 
mastery'"  (in  the  Olympian  Games,  in  racing,  wrestling,  &c.) 
"  is  temperate  in  all  things."  And  that  we  might  not  be  left  in 
doubt  as  to  what  the  nature  of  that  temperance  is,  we  have  a 
word  from  the  same  Greek  foundation  in  another  connection  : 
"  Let  your  moderation  be  known  unto  all  men ;  "  both  words 
meaning  self-restraint,  self-command,  self-government.  We 
are  to  look  at  all  things,  whether  of  theory  or  of  practice,  in 
a  calm,  and  quiet,  and  sober  light  —  to  take  a  medium  course. 


10  THE  BIBLE. 

How  does  this  wide-reaching  principle  dash  to  atoms  the 
multitudinous  and  baseless  fabrics  of  the  times,  the  thousand 
and  one  isms  which  disturb  the  Church,  and  State,  and  social 
life,  under  the  deceptive  name  of  "Reform,"  which,  in  ninety- 
nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  is  the  flag  of  the  devil,  the  ral- 
lying-point,  in  politics,  and  medicine,  and  religion,  of  the 
educated  knave,  the  pitiful  ignoramus,  and  the  heartless  hyp- 
ocrite ! 

This  "Temperance,"  this  divine  "Moderation,"  is  wide- 
reaching  in  its  application ;  it  extends  to  all  that  we  eat,  and 
drink,  and  do.  It  does  not  mean  that  we  are  to  die  of  thirst, 
nor  to  live  on  thin  air,  but  that  we  are  to  partake  of  all  the 
good  things  of  this  life,  as  rational  beings.  We  are  to  eat  in 
moderation  ;  drink  in  moderation  ;  sleep  in  moderation  ;  ex- 
ercise in  moderation.  In  these  four  things  consist  human 
health,  human  happiness,  and  human  success. 

One  of  the  broadest  foundations  of  the  Bible  is  laid  in  the 
remarkable  fact,  that,  to  a  very  wide  extent,  in  the  Jewish 
Theocracy,  the  means  of  health  was  made  a  part  of  their  re- 
ligion. We  have  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  want- 
ed to  hear  some  great  and  competent  mind  preach  a  scriptu- 
ral sermon  on  that  subject,  one  which  should  have  chapter, 
and  verse,  and  undisputed  whole  facts  to  back  every  enuncia- 
tion ;  for  that  is  the  preaching  of  power,  the  world  over ; 
convincing  alike  the  civilized  and  the  savage ;  it  is  the  terror 
to  evil-doers,  and  the  encouragement,  and  upholding,  and 
strengthening  of  them  who  do  well. 

Next  to  temperance,  as  a  means  of  health,  is  cleanliness 
in  person,  clothing,  and  habitation.  Hence  one  of  the  very 
first  religious  rites  was  that  of  circumcision  —  the  immediate 
effect  of  which  is  the  promotion  of  personal  cleanliness ;  and 
by  its  cooling  and  diminishing  the  exquisite  sensibility  of  the 
parts,  it  largely  modifies  the  vicious  tendencies  which  are  the 
bane  of  the  young ;  and  more  than  that,  does  much  towards 
preventing  those  exhaustions  which  afflict  the  unmarried. 
And,  further,  we  have  never  known  or  heard  of  a  case  where 
a  Jew  ever  committed  suicide  within  a  day  or  two  after  mar- 
riage. 

The  very  specific  directions  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  Le- 
viticus as  to  the  purification  of  the  parturient  are  as  needful 


THE   BIBLE.  11 

this  day,  as  to  personal  cleanliness,  as  in  the  earliest  ages  of 
the  world's  history.  There  should  bo  the  same  sanctity  now, 
about  such  things,  that  there  was  in  Moses'  time. 

With  the  same  intent,  in  part,  —  the  promotion  of  personal 
cleanliness, — were  the  injunctions  against  touching  the  car- 
casses of  carrion  beasts  and  birds,  the  penalty  being  that  the 
person  should  remain  unclean  the  remainder  of  the  day,  unfit 
to  associate  with  others. 

The  appearance  of  certain  reddish  or  greenish  streaks  in  the 
walls  of  a  house,  especially  if  inclined  to  spread,  was  to  be  an 
indication  that  such  a  house  was  unfit  for  a  human  habitation  ; 
and  the  command  was  imperative,  that  it  should  be  torn 
down,  stones,  timbers,  everything,  and  scattered  abroad.  We 
know  that  appearances  of  this  kind  in  houses  indicate  decom- 
position ;  and  that  there  must  be  moisture,  dampness  there : 
and  the  most  uninformed  know  that  a  damp  house  or  a  damp 
locality  is  unfavorable  to  health. 

As  to  the  plague  of  leprosy,  it  was  not  only  fearful  in  its 
ravages  in  the  system,  but  the  restrictions  imposed  on  the 
unfortunate  persons  who  were  its  victims,  made  it,  if  possi- 
ble, a  still  more  terrible  malady  —  to  be  an  outcast  from  soci- 
ety ;  to  come  in  contact  with  no  living  soul ;  to  be  shunned 
instinctively  by  every  one  ;  and,  lest  persons  should  approach 
unawares,  to  be  compelled  to  give  the  loud  warning  to  all 
coming  near,  "Keep  away  ;  I  am  '  unclean,'  unfit  to  associate 
with  my  kind  !  " —  a  disease  of  which  there  is  no  hope  of  cure. 
The  skin  became  dry  and  scaly ;  the  hair  fell  out ;  the  eye- 
brows aud  eyelashes  dropped  off;  the  nails  of  fingers  and  feet 
were  eaten  away  ;  ugly  excrescences  and  putrid  sores  deformed 
the^  person  ;  and  by  imperceptible,  yet  resistless  advances,  the 
miserable  body,  joint  by  joint,  was  eaten  away,  yet  not  to  be 
arrested  by  natural  death,  until  the  corrupted  mass  before 
you  had  scarcely  a  relic  to  indicate  that  it  had  ever  been 
human. 

It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  leprosy  now  is  the  same  in 
its  general  nature  as  in  ancient  times ;  and  taking  this  for 
granted,  we  have  only  to  make  use  of  a  common  observation 
as  to  lep'ers  in  Oriental  climes,  as  also  those  of  higher  lati- 
tudes—  that  it  is  owing  iti  large  part  to  want  of  personal 
cleanliness,  and  that,  terrible  as  it  is,  it  is  the  deserved  curse 


12  THE  BIBLE. 

of  the  more  than  beastly  filthiness  in  which  the  wretched 
creatures  wallow. 

Abstinence  from  the  use  of  lard,  and  pork  meat,  and  other 
gross  food,  with  weekly  fastings  and  personal  ablutions,  im- 
posed on  the  Hebrew  nation,  has  largely  aided  in  making 
them  a  healthy  and  prolific  people,  in  every  portion  of  the 
globe  —  exempting  them,  to  a  great  extent,  from  the  plagues 
and  pestilences  which  have  depopulated  other  nations. 
Doubtless  it  was  in  anticipation,  in  part,  of  their  to  be  scat- 
tered condition,  that  these  precepts  were  made  part  and  par- 
cel of  their  religion,  as  a  means  of  preserving  them  a  peculiar 
people  to  Himself — a  people  whose  greatest  glory  is  yet  to 
come,  and  will  not  tarry ;  and  for  the  accomplishment  of 
whose  preservation,  in  health  and  numbers,  in  spite  of  expo- 
sure to  the  diseases  of  every  clime,  Divinity  has  ordered  the 
strict  observance  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  Hygiene. 
It  was  upon  cleanliness  and  temperance  that  the  great  Howard 
relied,  as  protectors  against  noisome  dungeons  and  the  plagues 
of  the  Orient.  Nor  can  we  as  well  account  for  the  remarka- 
ble fact,  that  at  this  hour,  the  most  filthy  part  of  modern 
Rome,  the  Ghetto,  with  its  dilapidated  houses,  and  odorous 
atmosphere,  is  made,  bylaw,  the  Hebrew  quarter;  and  yet 
to  them  it  is  not  an  unhealthy  locality  —  presenting  a  striking 
exemplification  of  that  Divine  beneficence,  which,  while  it 
makes  obedience  a  test  of  fidelity,  causes  that  obedience  to 
be  followed  by  a  direct  blessing,  the  blessing  of  bodily  health. 
And  so  might  we  speak  of  the  numerous  purgations,  by  water 
and  fire,  which  occupy  so  large  a  space  in  Mosaic  history 
—  all  designed  in  their  bearings  to  promote  purity  of  body, 
purity  of  clothing,  purity  of  habitation  —  all  leading  upwards 
to  a  higher  and  holier  end,  purity  of  heart  and  soul,  for  now 
and  for  aye. 

Physicians  of  all  schools  agree,  that  the  closer  the  marriage 
of  blood  relations  is,  the  fewer  are  the  children,  the  more  im- 
perfect in  their  physical  organization,  and  weaker  as  to  their 
intellectual  capacities.  And  80  imperative  were  the  restric- 
tions imposed  on  the  Jews  against  marrying  their  blood  kin- 
dred, that  we  must  regard  it  as  a  means  in  the  Divine  Mind 
of  preserving  them  as  a  people  to  the  "  last  times."  In  no 
country  on  enrth  do  we  find  the  Hebrews  effeminate  in  body, 


THE  FOOD   WE  EAT.  13 

or  deficient  in  mental  capabilities.  On  the  contrary,  they 
have  furnished  the  world,  within  the  last  half  century,  with 
the  most  splendid  composers,  the  most  perfect  musicians,  the 
most  brilliant  orators,  the  most  accomplished  scholars;  they 
have  been  found  the  bravest  of  the  brave  on  the  battle-field, 
peerless  in  tragedy,  magnificent  in  song,  and  in  finance  with- 
out an  equal. 

What  cleanliness,  temperance,  moderation,  and  industry 
did  for  the  Jews  in  ancient  times,  they  are  doing  in  these  last 
days  for  a  people  especially  remarkable,  a  people  proverbial- 
ly "well  to  do,"  and  as  proverbially  the  longest  livers;  and 
who  are  now  patterns  to  all,  as  well  as  the  admiration  of  all, 
in  the  neatness  of  their  attire,  in  the  quietude  of  their  lives, 
and  in  their  universal,  substantial  thrift  (we  mean  the  Qua- 
kers) ;  and  the  world  over,  there  is  not  to  be  found  a  begging 
"Friend,"  or  a  loafing  "Israelite." 

We  have  good  authority,  then,  for  saying  to  our  readers, 
that  if  they  would  have  'a  pilgrimage,  long  and  healthful, 
ending  in  a  serene  and  happy  old  age,  they  must  obey  the  di- 
vine precepts  of  many  ages  ago  : — 

"Be  ye  temperate  in  all  things." 

"Wash  you,  make  you  clean." 

"  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread."     For, 

"If  any  would  not  work,  neither  should  he  eat." 

Temperance,  cleanliness,  and  industry  !  This  is  the  Hy- 
giene of  the  Bible.  A  "pathy"  as  old  as  the  race.  A  sys- 
tem of  medication  applicable  to  all  climes  and  all  constitu- 
tions ;  always  safe,  always  efficient,  and  to  which  human  sa- 
gacity, in  the  space  of  six  thousand  years,  has  not  added  one 
radically  new  idea. 


THE  FOOD  WE  EAT. 

HUFELAND  calls  the  stomach  Atria  mortis,  the  entrance-hall 
of  death,  and  says,  without  a  good  stomach  it  is  impossible  to 
attain  a  great  age.  All  have  naturally  good  stomachs,  that 
is,  good  digestion,  but  it  is  ruined  early  by  improper  feeding, 
as  to  time,  quality,  quantity,  and  mode  of  preparation,  Sub- 


14  TEE  FOOD   WE  EAT. 

stantial,  nourishing  food,  properly  prepared  and  well  digest- 
ed, these  three  are  the  great  essentials  of  a  long  and  healthy 
life.  I  will  here  give  two  examples,  full  of  instruction,  high- 
ly encouraging,  and  well  worthy  of  imitation  by  all  who  would 
like  to  live  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  health,  and  all  the  facul- 
ties of  mind  and  body,  for  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  or  more.  The  first  shows  how  an  injured  stomach  and 
constitution  may  be  repaired,  the  second  how  they  may  re- 
main in  perfect  health  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  all  by 
the  proper  management  of  eating  and  drinking. 

Lewis  Cornaro,  an  Italian  nobleman  of  wealth,  by  intem- 
perance and  debauchery  made  a  wreck  and  ruin  of  his  fortune 
aad  constitution  at  the  early  age  of  forty  years.  His  physi- 
cians, considering  his  habits  inveterate,  informed  him  that  res- 
toration was  impossible,  and,  with  characteristic  recklessness, 
he  resolved  that  if  he  had  to  die,  he  would  abandon  himself 
to  the  fullest  indulgences,  and  thus  get  all  the  good  possible 
out  of  the  short  remnant  of  life  before  him.  But  some  cir- 
cumstance shortly  occurred  which  induced  him  to  reverse  his 
decision,  and  experiment  on  the  possibility  of  disappointing 
his  doctors  and  his  heirs,  and  living  to  a  good  old  age.  This 
he  attempted  at  once  by  means  of  his  food  and  drink  alone. 
He  began  by  eating  and  drinking  very  little,  and  found  that 
his  health  improved.  Sometimes  he  would  eat  more,  then 
less,  until  he  discovered  what  amount  of  food  was  most  suita- 
ble for  him,  which  was  twelve  ounces  of  solid  food,  and  thir- 
teen ounces  of  fluid,  every  twenty-four  hours.  At  length  his 
health  became  so  good,  that  his  friends  suggested  to  him,  that 
now  he  was  so  hearty  and  well,  there  was  no  longer  any  ne- 
cessity for  such  a  strict  allowance,  and  that  if  he  ate  and 
drank  a  little  more  it  would  be  of  advantage  to  him.  He  re- 
plied that  he  was  now  well,  and  had  continued  well  for  some 
years,  on  this  allowance,  and  he  could  not  be  better,  and  that 
he  had  no  disposition  to  run  any  unnecessary  risks,  nor  to 
make  hazardous  experiments  ;  and  that,  as  he  had  regained  his 
title  and  estates,  and  his  health  too,  he  now  wished  greatly  to 
preserve  the  last,  that  he  might  long  enjoy  the  others.  How- 
ever, he  was  at  length  induced  to  gratify  his  friends,  and  in- 
creased his  food  to  fourteen,  and  his  drink  to  sixteen  ounces 
a  day,  and,  said  he,  "  Scarcely  had  I  continued  this  mode  of 


THE  FOOD  WE  EAT.  15 

living  ten  days,  when  I  began,  instead  of  being  cheerful  and 
lively  as  before,  to  become  uneasy  and  dejected,  a  burden  to 
myself  and  to  others.  On  the  twelfth  day  I  was  seized  with 
a  fever,  of  such  violence  for  thirty-five  days,  that  my  life  was 
despaired  of.  But,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  and  my  former 
regimen,  I  recovered ;  and  now,  in  my  eighty-third  year,  I 
enjoy  a  happy  state  of  both  body  and  mind.  I  can  mount 
my  horse  unaided.  I  climb  steep  hills.  When  I  return 
home  from  a  private  company,  or  the  senate,  I  find  eleven 
grandchildren,  whose  education,  amusements,  and  songs  are 
the  delight  of  my  old  age.  I  myself  often  sing  with  them, 
for  my  voice  is  clearer  and  stronger  than  it  was  in  my  youth  ; 
and  I  am  a  stranger  to  those  peevish  and  morose  humors 
which  so  often  fall  to  the  lot  of  old  age." 

In  the  latter  years  of  his  life  he  published  an  "  Earnest  Ex- 
hortation,'" which  he  closes  by  saying,  "  Since  length  of  days 
abounds  with  so  many  blessings  and  favors,  and  I  happen  to 
be  one  of  those  who  have  arrived  at  that  state,  I  cannot  but 
give  my  testimony  in  favor  of  it ;  and  I  assure  you  all  that  I 
really  enjoy  more  than  I  express,  and  that  I  have  no  other 
reason  for  writing,  but  that  of  demonstrating  the  great  ad- 
vantages which  arise  from  longevity,  to  the  end  that  their 
own  conviction  may  induce  them  to  observe  those  excellent 
rules  of  temperance  and  sobriety.  And,  therefore,  I  never 
cease  to  raise  my  voice,  crying  out  to  you,  May  your  days  be 
long,  that  you  may  be  the  better  servants  to  the  Almighty  " 

When  about  to  die,  he  raised  his  eyes,  and  exclaimed, 
with  great  animation,  "Full  with  joy  and  hope,  I  resign  my- 
self to  thee,  most  merciful  God  !  "  He  then  disposed  him- 
self with  dignity,  and  closing  his  eyes,  as  if  about  to  slum- 
ber, gave  a  gentle  sigh  and  expired,  in  his  ninety-ninth  year, 
A.  D.  1565. 

If  a  systematic  life  of  temperance  has  given  sixty  years 
additional  to  a  broken-down  constitution  of  forty,  it  becomes 
almost  a  crime  for  an  invalid  under  fifty  years  of  age  not  to 
avail  himself  of  the  trial. 

This  was  a  case  where  the  energies  of  the  stomach  have 
been  restored  by  temperance  in  eating  and  drinking,  and  re- 
maining in  their  integrity  for  more  than  a  half  century  there- 
after; and  what  has  been,  may  be  again. 


16  AIR  AND  EXERCISE. 

The  next  example  shows  that  the  stomach  is  made,  in  mod- 
ern times  too,  to  last  a  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

Thomas  Parr,  of  Shropshire,  England,  when  a  hundred  and 
twenty  years  old,  married  a  widow  for  his  second  wife,  who 
lived  with  him  twelve  years,  and  who  stated  that,  during  that 
time,  he  never  betrayed  any  signs  of  age  or  infirmity.  The 
King  of  England  having  heard  of  him,  invited  him  to  Lon- 
don, in  his  hundred  and  fifty-second  year.  He  was  treated  in 
so  royal  a  manner  at  court,  and  his  mode  of  living  was  so 
totally  changed,  that  he  died  soon  after,  in  1635,  aged  one 
hundred  and  fifty-two  years  and  nine  months,  proven  by  pub- 
lic documents.  His  body  was  examined  by  Dr.  Harvey,  who 
"  found  his  internal  organs  in  the  most  perfect  state,  nor  was 
the  least  symptom  of  decay  found  in  them.  His  cartilages, 
even,  were  not  ossified,  as  is  the  case  in  all  old  people.  The 
smallest  cause  of  death  had  not  settled  in  his  body ;  and  he 
died  merely  of  plethora,  because  he  had  been  too  well  fed." 

This  man  was  a  farm-servant,  and  had  to  maintain  himself 
by  daily  labor,  consequently  he  must  have  lived  on  plain  food, 
and  not  over  abundant ;  and  the  simple  fact,  that  at  his  death 
his  stomach  was  in  a  healthy  condition,  proves  conclusively 
its  capabilities  of  duration,  working  healthfully  to  the  last. 
And  there  can  be  no  reason,  in  the  nature  of  things,  why  the 
human  stomach  may  not  be  preserved  in  its  integrity,  aa*  a 
general  rule,  to  a  like  old  age. 

I  trust  no  reader  will  attempt  to  live  on  common  allowance, 
on  his  own  responsibility ;  he  should  consult  with  his  family 
physician,  for  age,  sex,  condition  in  life,  occupation,  materi- 
ally modify  the  amount  of  food  requisite  for  the  wants  of  the 
system. 


AIR   AND   EXERCISE. 

No  remedy  known  to  man  has  such  a  powerful  and  per- 
manent influence  in  maintaining  or  regaining  health  as  the 
judicious  employment  of  cheerful,  exertive  exercise  in  the 
open  air  ;  and  if  properly  attended  to  in  a  timely  manner,  it 
will  cure  a  large  majority  of  all  curable  diseases,  and  will 
sometimes  succeed  when  medicines  have  lost  their  power. 


AIR  AND  EXERCISE.  17 

If  you  have  actual  consumption,  or  are  merely  threatened 
with  it ;  or  if,  from  some  of  your  relatives  having  died  with 
it,  you  have  unpleasant  apprehensions  of  its  lurking  in  your 
own  body ;  or,  whether  from  a  diseased  liver,  or  disordered 
stomach,  or  a  dyspeptic  condition  of  the  system,  the  founda- 
tions of  the  dreadful  disease  are  being  laid  in  your  own  per- 
son ;  or,  whether  by  exposure,  by  over  bodily  exertion  or 
mental  labor,  or  wasting  cares  for  the  present,  or  anxieties  for 
the  future,  or  by  hugging  sharp-pointed  memories  of  the  past, 
or  by  intemperate  living,  in  eating  or  drinking,  or  by  unwise 
habits  or  practices  in  life,  you  have  originated  in  your  own 
person  the  ordinary  precursors  of  consumption,  such  as  hack- 
ing cough,  pains  in  the  breast,  chilliness,  wasting  of  flesh  and 
strength,  shortness  of  breath  on  exercise  —  under  all  these 
circumstances,  a  proper  attention  to  air  and  exercise  are  in- 
dispensable aids,  are  among  the  principal,  essential  means 
of  cure,  and  are  never  to  be  dispensed  with  ;  confinement  to 
the  regulated  temperature  of  a  room,  in  any  latitude,  is  cer- 
tain death  if  persevered  in ;  and  if,  from  any  cause,  this  air 
and  exercise  are  not  practicable  to  you,  except  to  a  limited 
extent,  it  is  your  misfortune ;  your  not  being  able  to  employ 
them  does  not  make  them  the  less  necessaiy,  and  they  have 
no  substitutes. 

When  the  body  is  diseased,  it  is  because  it  is  full  of  dis- 
eased, decaying,  dead,  and  useless  particles ;  the  object  of 
exercise,  as  well  as  medicine,  is  to  throw  off  these  particles ; 
medicine  does  it  more  quickly,  but  exercise  more  safely  and 
certainly,  if  there  is  time  to  wait  for  its  effects.  Every  mo- 
tion of  the  body,  every  bend  of  the  arm,  every  crook  of  the 
finger,  every  feeling,  every  breath,  every  thought,  is  at  the 
expense,  the  consumption,  the  throwing  off  of  a  greater  or 
less  proportion  of  the  material  body ;  all  muscular  motion 
implies  friction,  and  where  there  is  friction  there  must  be  loss. 
In  proportion,  then,  as  you  exercise,  you  get  rid  of  the  old, 
useless,  or  diseased  particles  of  the  body,  and  by  eating  sub- 
stantial, plain,  nourishing  food,  you  supply  new,  healthful, 
life-giving  particles  in  their  stead ;  therefore,  every  step  you 
take  tends  to  your  restoration,  provided  that  step  be  not  taken 
in  weariness  or  fatigue ;  for  then  it  prepares  the  way  for  a 
greater  destruction  of  living  particles,  rather  than  a  removal 


18  AIR  AND   EXERCISE. 

of  the  old.  You  will  never  fail  to  find,  that  whenever  you 
overdo  yourself,  in  the  way  of  exercise,  you  will  always  feel 
the  worse  after  it.  The  exercise  must  be  always  adapted  to 
the  strength,  and  the  rule  is  imperative  under  all  circum- 
stances, STOP  SHORT  OF  FATIGUE.  This  applies  to  mental  as 
well  as  to  bodily  operations.  But  if  you  say,  as  many  others 
have  said,  and  died,  "I  can't  help  it,"  then  you  must  take 
the  consequences  and  responsibility.  If  you  do  not  use  the 
means  of  health,  you  cannot  be  cured.  If  you  really  and 
truly  cannot  use  them,  that  inability  does  not  alter  the  neces- 
sity of  their  observance,  nor  the  effect  of  their  neglect. 

Take,  if  possible,  an  hour's  active,  cheerful,  willing  walk 
thrice  a  day  :  this  is  many  times  better  than  three  hours'  con- 
tinuous exercise.  The  noon  walk  should  be  before  dinner. 
If  you  walk,  or  leave  the  house  before  breakfast,  eat  first  a 
cracker  or  crust  of  bread.  Avoid,  during  warm  weather,  in 
the  south  and  west,  and  in  level  or  damp  situations,  the  out- 
door air,  including  the  hour  about  sunrise  and  sunset.  There 
is  no  danger  usually,  even  to  invalids,  in  exercising  in  the 
night  air,  if  it  be  sufficiently  vigorous  to  keep  off  a  feeling  of 
chilliness.  This  should  be  the  rule  in  all  forms  of  out-door 
exercise,  and  is  an  infallible  preventive,  as  far  as  my  experi- 
ence extends,  against  taking  cold  in  any  and  all  weathers, 
provided  it  be  not  continued  to  over-exhaustion  or  decided 
fatigue.  Such  exercise  never  can  give  a  cold,  whether  in  rain, 
or  sleet,  or  snow,  unless  there  be  some  great  peculiarity  in  the 
constitution.  It  is  the  conduct  after  exercise  which  gives  the 
cold ;  it  is  the  getting  cool  too  quick,  by  standing  or  sitting 
still  in  a  draught  of  air  or  open  window  or  cold  room.  The  only 
precaution  needed  is,  to  end  the  exercise  in  a  room  or  tem- 
perature uncomfortably  warm  when  first  entered,  and  there 
remain  until  rested,  and  no  moisture  is  observed  on  the 
surface. 

If  working  or  walking  cause  actual  fatigue,  then  horse- 
back exercise  is  the  next  best  for  both  sexes ;  but  if  not  able, 
then  ride  in  a  close  carriage,  especially  in  cold  weather,  or 
when  there  is  a  damp,  raw  wind  blowing.  Yqu  may  in  the 
bitterest,  coldest  weather  secure  for  yourself  the  most  favor- 
able of  all  circumstances  for  recovery  —  that  is,  a  cool,  dry, 
still  atmosphere,  by  riding  several  hours  a  day  in  a  close  car- 


AIR  AND  EXERCISE.  19 

riage,  well  ajid  warmly  clad,  with  your  feet  on  bottles  of  hot 
water.  The  atmosphere  of  the  carriage  will  not  become  im- 
pure but  to  a  slight  extent,  as  the  cold,  fresh  air  is  constantly 
coming  in  at  every  crevice  at  the  sides  and  below,  while  the 
warm,  used  air  rises  to  the  top,  and  is  expelled  by  the  more 
powerful  currents  from  without. 

It  is  a  laborious  business  to  spend  hours  every  day  in  exer- 
cising, for  the  mere  sake  of  the  exercise  ;  therefore,  if  pos- 
sible, devise  means  of  employment  which  will  combine  utility 
with  your  exercise.  The  reader's  ingenuity  may  devise 
methods  of  accomplishing  this,  adapted  to  his  condition,  and 
the  circumstances  by  which  he  is  surrounded.  Some  trim,  or 
bud,  or  graft  fruit-trees,  work  in  a  garden,  cultivate  the  vine, 
or  flowers,  or  plough  in  fields  free  of  stumps  and  stones,  thus 
requiring  no  great  effort,  yet  a  steady  one,  which  can  be  left 
off  at  any  moment,  and  followed  more  or  less  energetically, 
so  as  to  produce  a  very  moderate  degree  of  perspiration  on 
the  forehead,  without  fatigue  ;  others  saw  wood,  visit  the  poor 
and  unfortunate,  drive  cattle,  collect  accounts,  obtain  sub- 
scriptions, sell  books,  distribute  tracts,  ride  on  agencies. 
The  great  object  is  useful,  agreeable,  profitable  employment 
in  the  open  air,  for  several  hours  every  day,  rain  or  shine,  hot 
or  cold ;  and  whoever  has  the  determination  and  energy  suffi- 
cient to  accomplish  this,  will  seldom  fail  to  delight  himself 
and  his  friends  with  speedy,  permanent,  and  most  encouraging 
results ;  and  be  assured  that  these  alone  are  the  persons  who 
do,  or  can  rationally  expect  to  succeed  in  effectually  and  per- 
manently warding  off  the  disease,  when  seriously  threatened, 
or  in  arresting  its  progress  permanently,  when  wholly  unex- 
pected by  themselves,  their  friends,  or  their  physicians. 

While  exercise  is  important  in  working  off  the  old,  useless, 
decayed,  dead  particles  from  the  system,  it  is  equally  advan- 
tageous in  keeping  the  body  warm,  by  driving  the  blood  to 
the  skin,  and  keeping  it  soft  and  moist ;  for  persons  who  have 
a  dry,  harsh,  cold  skin  are  never  well.  But  pure  air  is  as 
important  as  exercise,  because  the  food  we  eat  never  becomes 
blood  until  it  meets  in  the  lungs  the  air  we  breathe  ;  if,  then, 
we  do  not  take  in  enough  air,  or  what  we  do  take  in  is  impure, 
the  blood  will  be  imperfect  and  impure,  and,  in  proportion, 
unfit  to  nourish,  strengthen,  and  vivify  the  body.  And  as  in 


20  AIR  AND  EXERCISE. 

threatened  consumption  the  lungs  work  more  or  less  imper- 
fectly, and  consume  less  air  than  the  system  requires,  so  much 
the  more  need  that  the  air  which  is  consumed  should  be  of 
the  purest  kind  possible.  Therefore,  every  hour  spent  out  of 
doors  in  the  pure  SAY,  fatigue  and  chilliness  being  absent,  adds 
that  much  to  the  certainty  of  your  recovery.  Thus  you  see 
that,  while  exercise  works  the  old  diseased  particles  from  your 
body,  pure  air  puts  the  finishing  stroke  of  perfection  to  the 
new  particles  which  are  to  take  their  place,  and  the  whole 
body,  in  proportion,  becomes  new  and  fresh,  and  healthful 
and  young.  And  whatever  advice  is  given  you  in  other 
printed  or  written  papers,  it  is  designed  as  an  aid  to  bring 
about  these  things  in  a  shorter  time  and  easier  way.  This  aid 
is  needed  in  most  cases,  because,  unfortunately,  the  disease  has 
been  neglected  or  mistreated  so  long,  that  nature  has  lost  the 
power,  to  a  great  extent,  of  helping  herself,  and  medicine 
must  be  taken,  or  the  patient  perish. 

There  are  two  dangers  in  taking  exercise,  that  of  overdoing 
it,  and  of  getting  cool  too  quick  afterwards.  Therefore 
observe  the  following  rules  :  — 

If  3rou  ride  and  walk  on  any  occasion,  do  the  riding  first, 
then  the  walk  will  warm  you  up  ;  but  riding  after  a  walk,  you 
get  chilled  before  you  know  it. 

At  the  end  of  a  ride  or  walk,  do  not  for  a  single  moment 
sit  or  stand  still  anywhere  out  of  doors,  nor  on  damp  places, 
nor  on  stone  or  iron  seats.  Never  end  a  walk  or  ride  in  a 
new  building,  or  in  a  room  which  has  been  closed  for  some 
days,  or  has  no  fire  in  it,  especially  in  winter.  Walk  quickly, 
cheerfully,  with  the  chin  on  or  above  a  horizontal  line.  Make 
no  other  effort  to  walk  straight,  except  thus  to  elevate  your 
chin  ;  in  other  words,  hold  up  your  head.  Breathe  habitually 
with  your  mouth  closed,  in  damp  or  cold  weather;  and  in 
going  into  the  out-door  air,  close  it  before  you  leave  the 
house,  and  keep  it  closed  until  you  get  warm,  especially  after 
speaking  or  singing. 

Embrace  every  opportunity  of  running  up  a  pair  of  stairs, 
or  up  a  hill,  with  the  lips  closed  :  a  dozen  times  a  day,  if  pos- 
sible. A  rapid  run  of  fifty  or  a  hundred  yards  and  back, 
three  or  four  times  a  day,  with  the  mouth  closed,  will  be  of 
inestimable  advantage.  The  reasons  you  can  study  out  at 
your  leisure. 


AIR  AND  EXERCISE.  21 

But  simple  as  these  things  are,  never  attempt  them  without 
the  special  advice  of  an  experienced  physician,  for  in  certain 
forms  of  heart  affections,  as  every  practitioner  well  knows,  as 
also  in  one  or  two  other  ailments,  such  exercises  would,  in 
some  cases,  cause  certain  and  speedy  death. 

It  is  of  high  importance  to  the  healthy  who  wish  to  keep 
so,  and  to  the  sick  who  are  in  search  of  so  great  a  happiness 
as  that  of  being  sound  and  well  again,  to  breathe  habitually 
with  the  lips  closed  in  cold  weather :  in  going  from  a  warmer 
to  a  cooler,  or  from  a  cooler  to  a  warmer  atmosphere,  the 
injury  is  perhaps  equally  great  either  way.  Close  the  mouth 
before  leaving  a  concert  room,  or  church,  or  other  warm 
apartment,  and  keep  it  resolutly  closed  until  you  have  wralked 
far  and  fast  enough  to  have  hastened  the  circulation  of  the 
blood,  and  made  it  more  full,  as  well  as  active. 

In  going  into  a  warm  apartment,  from  the  cold,  out-door  air, 
the  same  direction  is  not  of  less  importance ;  nor  should  you 
go  at  once  to  the  fire ;  a  delay  of  two  or  three  minutes  is 
sufficient  in  this  case.  The  object,  in  both  cases,  is  the  same, 
to  prevent  a  sudden  transition  from  heat  to  cold,  or  the  con- 
trary. Such  sudden  transitions  give  pain  to  the  solid  tooth, 
or  discomfort  when  made  to  a  single  square  inch  of  the  skin  ; 
and  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  air  passages  are  among 
the  most  delicate  structures  of  the  body,  and  that  the  lungs, 
if  spread  out  on  a  wall,  would  cover  a  surface  ten  times 
larger  than  the  whole  skin  would  do,  the  importance  of  tho 
subject  must  strongly  impress  every  reflecting  mind. 

With  the  above  precaution,  you  need  not  be  afraid  of  out- 
door air,  night  or  day,  as  long  as  you  are  in  motion  sufficient 
to  keep  off  a  feeling  of  chilliness;  hence,  in  cold  weather, 
exercise  on  foot  is  preferable  to  riding.  While  walking  in 
moderately  cold  weather,  the  hands  should  be  covered  with  a 
thin  pair  of  gloves,  such  as  silk  or  thread,  and  woollen  ones  in 
midwinter.  If  you  have  to  ride  in  winter,  endeavor  to  have 
clothing  enough  to  prevent  a  feeling  of  chilliness,  but  be  care- 
ful to  wear  a  loose  fitting  boot  or  shoe  ;  never  put  on  a  new 
pair,  winter  or  summer,  when  starting  on  a  journey,  or  coming 
to  the  city.  In  very  cold  or  windy  weather,  ride  in  a  close 
carriage. 


22  HORSEBACK  EXERCISE. 


HORSEBACK  EXERCISE. 

RIDING  on  horseback  is,  perhaps,  of  all  others,  the  most 
manly,  elegant,  and  efficient  form  of  exercise.  In  the  first 
place,  it  cannot  be  taken  without  being  out  of  doors  ;  then  it 
enables  you  to  breathe  a  larger  amount  of  fresh  air  than  if 
walking,  because  you  pass  through  a  greater  space  in  less 
time,  and  consequently  a  greater  number  of  layers,  or  rather 
sections,  of  fresh  air  come  in  contact  with  the  nostrils,  with 
less  fatigue.  Another  advantage  is,  that  all  the  muscles  of 
the  body  are  exercised  in  moderation,  and,  to  a  certain  extent, 
equally  so.  And  then  again,  while  thus  exercising,  and  while 
every  step  forward  gives  you  a  fresh  draught  of  pure  out- 
door air,  the  mind  is  entertained  by  every  variety  of  objects, 
new  things  being  constantly  presented.  The  only  thing  to  be 
guarded  against  is  a  feeling  of  chilliness  ;  this  is  essential,  for 
every  chill  is  an  injury ;  whether  a  man  be  sick  or  well,  a 
chill  must  necessarily  be  succeeded  by  a  fever,  and  fever  is 
disease. 

Horseback  exercise,  to  be  highly  beneficial,  should  be 
active;  a  "hand  gallop"  or  a  trot;  and,  if  practicable,  a 
different  road  should  be  travelled  every  day,  so  that  the  mind 
may  be  diverted  by  novelties,  and  thus  compelled  away  from 
bodil}r  ailments. 

The  English,  as  a  nation,  are  a  stout,  robust,  hearty  race. 
The  nobility  have  a  long  list  of  names  who  have  lived  to  the 
age  of  seventy,  eighty,  and  even  ninety  years :  but  horseback 
exercise  with  them  is  a  national  amusement ;  many  of  them 
make  a  ride  on  horseback  as  much  a  matter  of  course  as  a 
daily  dinner.  Almost  the  only  gentleman  seen  on  horseback 
in  New  Orleans  is  the  English  merchant :  showing  the  power 
of  a  national  habit,  and  its 'influence  abroad  as  well  as  at 
home. 

If  parents  could  be  made  to  comprehend  the  full  advan- 
tages of  a  constant  breathing  of  pure  air  to  their  children, 
and  would  be  at  pains  to  impress  their  young  minds  with  its 
high  importance ;  were  they  to  pay  more  attention  to  their 
physical  training,  requiring  them  to  take  active  exercise,  for 


GOING   TO   THE  SOUTH.  23 

hours  every  day,  on  foot  and  on  horseback,  there  would  be 
some  probability  that,  notwithstanding  the  heats  and  impuri- 
ties of  a  city  atmosphere,  those  children  would  grow  up  in 
healthfulness,  and  live  to  a  good  old  age,  instead  of  paling 
away,  as  they  do,  long  before  their  prime,  growing  prema- 
turely old,  from  a  constitution  blasted  in  the  bud. 

It  is  owing,  mainly,  to  their  delight  in  out-door  exercise, 
that  the  elevated  classes  in  England  reach  a  patriarchal  age, 
notwithstanding  thei^  habits  of  high  living,  of  late  hours,  of 
wine-drinking,  and  many  other  health-destroying  agencies ; 
the  deaths  of  their  generals,  their  lords,  their  earls,  and  their 
dukes  are  chronicled,  almost  every  week,  at  seventy,  eighty, 
and  ninety  years  :  it  is  because  they  will  be  on  horseback,  the 
most  elegant,  rational,  and  accomplished  of  all  forms  of  mere 
exercise,  both  for  sons  and  daughters.  But  the  whole  credit 
of  longevity  to  these  classes  must  not  be  given  to  their  love 
of  field-sports  j  it  must  be  divided  with  the  other  not  less 
characteristic  traits  of  an  English  nobleman  —  he  will  take  the 
world  easy;  and  could  we,  as  a  people,  persuade  ourselves  to 
do  the  same  thing  habitually,  it  would  add  ten  years  to  the 
average  of  human  life,  and  save  many  a  broken  heart,  and 
broken  fortune,  and  broken  constitution. 


GOING   TO    THE   SOUTH. 

THE  colder  the  out-door  air  is,  the  purer  it  must  be,  and 
therefore  more  healthful  and  invigorating ;  not  only  is  it 
more  healthful  in  consequence  of  its  freedom  from  impurities, 
but  also  from  the  concentration  of  its  life-giving  property, 
because  air  is  condensed  by  cold ;  it  is  packed,  as  it  were, 
more  solid ;  so  that,  even  supposing  two  cubic  inches  of  air 
equally  pure,  one  at  the  equator,  the  other  at  the  poles,  the 
one  at  the  poles  has  a  much  larger  amount  of  oxygen,  the 
great  life-giver  and  purifier  of  the  blood. 

If,  therefore,  a  man  is  really  consumptive,  a  warmer  climate 
will  inevitably  hasten  his  death  ;  and  it  is  wonderful  that  it 
continues  to  be  the  stereotyped  advice  given  by  northern 
medical  and  uon- medical  men,  without  the  slightest  consider- 


24  SOW  TO   SLEEP. 

ation  of  the  ability  of  the  patient  to  meet  the  expenses  of 
such  a  journey;  and  more,  without  any  opportunity  of  per- 
sonally observing,  on  the  spot,  whether  such  advice  is  for  life 
or  death. 


HOW   TO    SLEEP. 

SOUND,  connected,  early,  refreshing  sleep  is  as  essential  to 
health  as  our  daily  food.  There  is  no  merit  in  simply  getting 
up  early.  The  full  amount  of  sleep  requisite  for  the  wants 
of  the  system  should  be  obtained,  even  if  it  requires  till 
noon.  I  go  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock  the  year  round,  and  I  stay 
there  until  I  feel  rested  ;  but  I  do  not  go  to  sleep  again  after 
I  have  once  awaked  of  myself,  after  daylight.  I  remain  in 
bed  until  the  feeling  of  tiredness  goes  off,  if  there  is  any,  and 
I  get  up  when  I  feel  like  it.  I  do  not  sleep  in  the  daytime  ; 
it  is  a  pernicious  practice,  and  will  diminish  the  soundness  of 
repose  at  night.  Dr.  Holyoke,  after  he  was  a  hundred  years 
old,  said,  "  I  have  always  taken  care  to  have  a  full  proportion 
of  sleep,  which,  I  suppose,  has  contributed  to  my  longevity." 
The  want  of  sufficient  sleep  is  a  frequent  cause  of  insanity. 
To  obtain  good  sleep,  the  mind  should  be  in  a  sober,  quiet 
frame  for  several  hours  before  bedtime.  I  think  people 
require  one  hour's  more  sleep  in  winter  than  in  summer.  In 
connection  with  this  subject,  the  North  British  Review  illus- 
trates the  importance  of  sufficient  sleep  on  a  parallel  with  the 
natural  history  of  the  Sabbath  :  "  The  Creator  has  given  us 
a  natural  restorative  —  sleep  ;  and  a  moral  restorative  —  Sab- 
bath-keeping ;  and  it  is  ruin  to  dispense  with  either.  Under 
the  pressure  of  high  excitement,  individuals  have  passed 
weeks  together  with  little  sleep  or  none  ;  but  Avhen  the  pro- 
cess is  long  continued,  the  over-driven  powers  rebel,  and 
fever,  delirium,  and  death  come  on.  Nor  can  the  natural 
amount  be  systematically  curtailed  without  corresponding 
mischief.  The  Sabbath  does  not  arrive  like  sleep.  The  day 
of  rest  does  not  steal  over  us  like  the  hour  of  slumber.  It 
does  not  entrance  us  almost,  whether  we  will  or  not ;  but, 
addressing  us  as  intelligent  beings,  our  Creator  assures  us 
that  we  need  it,  and  bids  us  notice  its  return,  and  court  its 


HOW   TO    SLEEP.  25 

renovation.  And  if,  going  in  the  face  of  the  Creator's  kind- 
ness, we  force  ourselves  to  work  all  days  alike,  it  is  not  long 
till  we  pay  the  forfeit.  The  mental  worker  —  the  man  of 
business,  or  the  man  of  letters  —  finds  his  ideas  coming  tur- 
bid and  slow  ;  the  equipoise  of  his  faculties  is  upset ;  he  grows 
moody,  fitful,  and  capricious ;  and,  with  his  mental  elasticity 
broken,  should  any  disaster  occur,  he  subsides  into  habitual 
melancholy,  or  in  self-destruction  speeds  his  guilty  exit  from 
a  gloomy  world.  And  the  manual  worker, —  the  artisan,  the 
engineer, —  toiling  on  from  day  to  day,  and  week  to  week,  the 
bright  intuition  of  his  eyes  gets  blunted;  and,  forgetful  of 
their  cunning,  his  fingers  no  longer  perform  their  feats  of 
twinkling  agility,  nor  by  a  plastic  and  tuneful  touch  mould 
dead  matter,  or  wield  mechanic  power  ;  but  mingling  his  life's 
blood  in  his  daily  drudgery,  his  locks  are  prematurely  gray, 
his  genial  humor  sours,  and  slaving  it  till  he  has  become  a 
morose  or  reckless  man,  for  any  extra  effort,  or  any  blink  of 
balmy  feelings,  he  must  stand  indebted  to  opium  or  alcohol." 

A  sleeping-room  should  be  large  and  airy,  the  higher  from 
the  ground  the  better,  even  in  the  country ;  it  should  contain 
but  very  little  furniture,  no  curtains  or  clothing  of  any 
description  should  be  hung  up  in  it,  nor  should  it  contain,  for 
a  moment,  any  vegetables  or  fruit,  or  flowers,  or  standing 
liquids  of  any  kind ;  nor  should  there  be  any  carpet  on  the 
floor,  except  a  small  strip  at  the  side  of  the  bed,  so  that  in 
getting  out  of  bed  a  shock  may  not  be  impacted  by  the  warm 
feet  coming  in  contact  with  the  cold  floor.  The  fireplace 
should  be  always  left  open  during  the  day  for  several  hours  ; 
the  windows  and  doors  should  be  left  open  while  the  sun  is 
shining,  but  the  windows  should  be  closed  an  hour  or  more 
before  sundown.  As  soon  as  a  person  is  dressed  in  the 
morning,  he  should  leave  his  chamber ;  the  bedding  should  be 
hung  on  chairs,  and  allowed  to  air  for  several  hours. 

On  going  to  bed,  a  window  should  be  hoisted  several  inches 
at  bottom,  and,  if  practicable,  be  let  down  as  much  at  top, 
that,  while  the  heavy  fresh  air  comes  in  below,  the  light  and 
foul  air  may  pass  out  above.  As  a  general  rule,  it  is  far  best 
to  sleep  in  rooms  where  no  fire  has  been  burning  since  break- 
fast, btlt  there  should  be  bed-clothing  enough  to  keep  from 


26  HOW  TO  SLEEP. 

feeling  chilly.  If  it  is  bitter  cold  weather,  with  high  winds, 
it  may  be  better  to  build  a  moderate  fire  about  dark,  but  not 
to  let  it  go  entirely  out  before  morning.  If  there  is  any  fire 
at  all  in  a  sleeping-room,  it  should  not  be  allowed  to  go  out 
altogether. 

A  person  should  sleep  in  one  garment,  a  coarse  cotton 
shirt,  and  no  more,  without  a  button,  or  pin,  or  string  about 
him.  No  one,  who  pretends  to  common  cleanliness,  should 
sleep  in  a  garment  worn  during  the  day,  nor  wear  during  the 
day  a  garment  in  which  he  has  slept;  any  garment  worn 
should  have  six  or  eight  hours'  airing  every  twenty-four 
hours. 

No  sleeping-room  should  be  less  than  eight  feet  high,  nor 
should  it  contain,  for  each  person  sleeping  in  it,  less  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  superficial  measure,  or  about  twelve  feet 
square. 

To  show  what  a  bearing  a  small  deficiency  in  the  action  of 
the  lungs  has  on  the  health,  I  present  the  following  calcula- 
tion, applied  to  a  night's  sleep  of  eight  hours  :  A  person  in 
good  health,  and  of  medium  size,  will,  in  that  eight  hours' 
sleep,  breathe  nine  hundred  gallons  of  air ;  but  if  one  fifth  of 
his  lungs  are  inoperative,  he  consumes  in  the  same  time  one 
hundred  and  eighty  gallons  less,  and  in  the  course  of  twenty- 
four  hours,  seven  hundred  gallons  less  than  he  ought  to  do. 
No  wonder  then  that,  when  the  lungs  begin  to  work  less  freely 
than  they  ought  to  do,  the  face  so  soon  begins  to  pale,  the 
appetite  fails,  the  strength  declines,  the  flesh  fades,  and  the 
victim  dies.  Not  only  are  consumptions  traceable  to  this 
habitual  deficiency  of  respiration,  but  rheumatism,  colds, 
chills,  ague,  bilious,  yellow,  and  putrid  fevers,  suppressions, 
whites,  dyspepsia,  and  the  like.  So  that,  in  every  view  of 
the  case,  any  method  which  secures  the  prompt  detection  of 
this  insufficient  breathing,  and  rectifies  it  without  delay, 
should  merit  and  demand  the  immediate  investigation  of  every 
lover  of  the  health  and  happiness  of  mankind. 


MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS.  27 


MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS. 

IF  a  man  has  all  his  lungs  within  him,  in  full  operation,  it 
is  impossible  for  him  to  have  consumption,  whatever  may  be 
his  symptoms,  because  consumption  is  a  destruction  of  a  por- 
tion of  the  lungs  ;  and  when  that  is  the  case,  they  can  no  more 
have  the  full  amount  of  breath  or  air,  than  a  gallon  measure 
can  hold  a  gallon  after  its  size  has  been  diminished  by  having 
a  portion  of  the  top  cut  off  or  removed. 

It  becomes,  then,  of  great  importance  to  accomplish  two 
things :  — 

First,  to  measure  accurately,  and  with  as  much  certainty 
as  you  would  measure  wheat  by  a  standard  and  authentic 
bushel  measure,  the  amount  of  air  contained  in  the  lungs. 

Second,  to  ascertain  what  amount  of  air  the  lungs  ought  to 
contain  in  full  and  perfect  health. 

The  chemist  has  no  difficulty  in  measuring  out  to  you  a 
cubic  foot  of  gas.  The  gas  which  lights  our  dwellings,  and 
which  burns  in  the  streets  of  cities,  when  the  moon  don't 
shine,  is  capable  of  being  accurately  measured ;  and  so  is  the 
air  we  breathe,  with  equal  simplicity  and  certainty,  even  to  the 
fraction  of  a  cubic  inch. 

Take  a  common  tub  or  barrel,  of  any  height,  say  two  feet, 
and  till  it  with  water ;  get  a  tin  cup  of  equal  length,  and  of 
such  a  circumference  that  each  inch  in  length  should  contain 
ten  cubic  inches  of  air  or  water ;  turn  this  tin  cup  bottom 
upwards  in  the  barrel  of  water ;  make  a  hole  in  the  bottom  of 
the  tin  cup,  insert  a  quill  or  other  tube  into  this  hole,  take 
a  full  breath,  and  then  blow  out  all  the  breath  you  can  at  a 
single  expiration  through  this  quill ;  the  air  thus  expired  gets 
between  the  surface  of  the  water  and  the  bottom  of  the  tin 
cup,  and  causes  the  tin  cup  to  rise ;  if  it  rises  an  inch,  then 
you  have  emptied  from  your  lungs  into  the  cup  ten  cubic 
inches  of  air ;  if  you  cause  the  cup  to  rise  twenty  inches, 
then  your  lungs  have  measured  out  two  hundred  cubic  inches 
of  air ;  and  by  dividing  the  cup  into  tenths  of  inches,  you  will 
be  able  to  ascertain  the  contents  of  the  lungs  to  a  single  cubic 
inch. 


28  MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS. 

This  is  a  lung  measurer,  of  the  simplest  form  ;  it  must  be  so 
arranged  with  a  pulley  on  each  side  of  the  cup,  each  pulley 
having  a  weight  of  half  the  weight  of  the  cup,  so  as  to  steady 
the  cup  when  it  rises,  and  keep  it  at  any  point,  as  lamps  are 
sometimes  suspended  in  public  buildings. 

Being  able,  then,  to  measure  the  amount  of  air  the  lungs  do 
hold,  down  to  an  inch,  or  even  a  fraction  of  an  inch,  if  de- 
sired, the  next  point  to  know  is,  how  much  air  ought  a  man's 
lungs  to  contain  when  he  is  in  perfect  health ;  for  if  a  man  in 
sound  health  can  expire,  or  measure  out,  two  hundred  cubic 
inches  of  air,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  if  his  lungs  are  half  gone 
he  can  give  out  but  one  hundred  cubic  inches,  and  so  of  any 
other  proportion,  large  or  small ;  and  the  grand  practical  con- 
clusion is,  that  when  a  man  can  breathe  out  the  full  quantity, 
all  his  lungs  must  be  within  him,  and  the  presence  of  con- 
sumption is  an  utter  impossibility  in  that  man ;  and  even  if 
this  was  the  only  point  to  be  learned,  what  a  glorious  truth  it 
must  be  to  the  man  who  was  apprehensive  of  his  being  con- 
sumptive, that  such  a  thing  is  simply  an  impossibility,  de- 
monstrably  so  by  figures  and  by  sight !  He  can  see  it  for 
himself,  without  the  necessity  of  leaning  doubtfully,  so  doubt- 
fully, sometimes,  on  the  judgment  or  expressed  opinion  of 
his  physician. 

To  find  out  how  much  air  a  health}'  man's  lungs  should 
hold,  we  must  act  precisely  as  we  would  in  determining  the 
quantity  of  anything  else  ;  we  must  experiment,  observe,  and 
judge.  We  have  decided,  long  ago,  on  the  average  weight 
of  men,  their  average  amount  of  blood,  the  average  weight  of 
the  brain,  and  surely  there  ought  to  be  some  method  of  de- 
termining the  average  amount  of  a  man's  lungs.  But  this 
last  would  not  be  sufficiently  accurate  to  make  it  safely  prac- 
tical ;  we  must  be  able  to  say  to  this  man,  your  lungs,  if 
sound  and  well,  will  hold  so  much  ;  and  to  another,  so  much, 
for  the  amount  of  breath  is  as  various  as  the  amount  of  brain. 
A  large  head  has  a  large  amount  of  brain  of  some  kind  or 
other,  and  so  a  large  chest  must  have  a  large  quantity  of  lungs 
to  fill  it ;  these  are  general  truths  only.  If  a  man  six  foot 
high,  and  known  to  be  in  perfect  health,  will  give  out  from 
his  lungs,  at  one  expiration,  two  hundred  and  sixty-two  cubic 
inches  of  air,  that  is  a  fact  to  begin  with. 


MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS.  29 

If  a  thousand  healthy  six-footers,  or  ten  thousand,  do  not 
fail  in  one  single  instance  to  give  out  as  much,  then  we  may 
conclude  that  any  other  man  as  tall,  who  gives  out  as  much, 
is  also  healthy  as  to  his  lungs ;  and  at  length  the  facts  become 
so  cumulative,  that  we  feel  safe  in  saying  that  any  man  six 
feet  hiffh,  who  can  breathe  out  at  one  single  effort  two  hundred 

c5       '  O 

and  sixty-two  cubic  inches  of  air,  that  man  must  have  all  his 
lungs  within  him,  and  that  they  are  working  fully  and  well. 

But  if,  in  pursuing  these  investigations  in  the  same  manner, 
as  to  healthful  men  five  feet  high,  we  observe  that  in  any 
number  of  thousands,  not  one  single  one  ever  fails  to  give  one 
less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  inches,  and  that  any  other 
number  of  thousands,  five  feet  seven  inches  high,  and  in  ac- 
knowledged perfect  health,  never  fail  in  one  solitary  instance 
to  give  out  two  hundred  and  twenty-two  cubic  inches  of  air, 
then  a  thinking  man  begins  to  surmise  that  the  amount  of 
lungs  a  man  in  health  has  bears  some  proportion  to  his  height : 
this  is  found  to  be  the  actual  fact  of  the  case.  And  without 
being  tedious,  I  will  give  the  result,  that,  for  every  inch  that 
a  man  is  taller,  above  a  certain  height,  he  gives  out  eight 
more  cubic  inches  of  air,  if  he  is  in  sound  health  as  to  his 
lungs. 

Let  the  reader  bear  in  mind  that  these  are  the  general  prin- 
ciples. Circumstances  modify  them ;  but  I  do  not  want  to 
complicate  the  subject  by  stating  those  modifications  at  pres- 
ent. I  wish  the  reader  first  to  make  one  clear,  simple  truth 
his  own,  by  thinking  of  it  and  talking  about  it,  when  occa- 
sion offers. 

But,  for  the  sake  of  making  a  clear,  distinct  impression,  let 
us  recapitulate :  — 

1.  The  amount  of  air  which  a  man's  lungs  can  expire  at 

one  effort  can  be  accurately  and  uniformly  measured, 
down  to  the  fraction  of  a  cubic  inch. 

2.  The  amount  of  air  which  a  healthy  man's  lungs  hold  is 

ascertained  by  cumulative  observations. 

3.  That  the  amount  thus  contained  is  proportioned  to  the 

man's  height. 

4.  That  that  proportion  is   eight  cubic  inches  of  air  for 

every  additional  inch  of  height  above  a  certain  standard. 
With  these  four  facts,  now  admitted  as  such,  inferences  may 


30  MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS. 

be  drawn  of  great  interest  in  connection  with  other  observa- 
tions, which  any  reader,  who  takes  the  trouble,  may  verify. 

Observation  1 .  —  I  have  never  known  a  man  who  was  in 
admitted  consumption,  and  whose  subsequent  death  and  post 
mortem  confirmed  the  fact,  capable  of  measuring  his  full 
standard. 

Observation  2. — In  numerously  repeated  instances,  per- 
sons have  been  pronounced  to  have  undisputed  consumption, 
and  as  such  were  abandoned  to  die  ;  but  on  measurement  they 
have  reached  their  full  standard,  enabling  me  to  say  they  had 
not  consumption,  and  their  return  to  good  health,  and  their 
continuance  in  it  for  years  after,  and  to  this  day,  is  an  abiding 
proof  of  the  correctness  of  my  decision. 

Observation  3.  —  No  persons  have  come  under  my  care, 
who  died  of  consumption  within  a  year,  who,  at  the  time  of 
examination,  reached  their  full  lung  measurement. 

Observation  4.  —  Therefore,  any  man  who  reaches  his 
standard  has  reason  to  believe  that  he  cannot  die  of  consump- 
tion within  a  year —  an  assurance  which,  in  many  cases,  may 
be  of  exceeding  value. 

Observation  5. — As  a  man  with  healthy  lungs  reaches 
his  full  standard,  and  as  it  is  impossible  for  a  consumptive 
man  to  measure  his  full  standard,  then  it  may  be  safely  con- 
cluded that  a  man  cannot  die  of  consumption  while  he  gives 
his  healthy  measure ;  and,  also,  that  he  who  cannot  measure 
full  measure  full,  is  in  danger,  and  should  not  rest  a  single 
day,  until  he  can  measure  to  the  full. 

When  persons  are  under  medical  treatment  for  deficient 
lung  measurement,  accompanied  with  the  ordinary  symptoms 
of  common  consumption,  they  improve  from  week  to  week  in 
proportion  as  they  measure  out  more  and  more  air  from  the 
lungs ;  on  the  other  band,  when  they  measure  less  and  less 
from  time  to  time,  they  inevitably  die.  With  this  view  of  the 
case,  as  a  general  rule,  a  man  can  tell  for  himself,  as  well  as 
his  physician,  whether  he  is  getting  well  or  not. 

"THE  MATHEMATICAL  MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS  AS  A 
SIGN  OF  CONSUMPTION. 

"  The  lungs  contain  air ;  and  their  object  is  to  receive,  hold, 
and  expel  air ;  a  certain  amount  of  this  air  is  necessary  to  the 


MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNQ8.  31 

health  of  any  individual,  but  that  amount  must  vary  in  pro- 
portion to  the  size  and  age  of  a  person,  as  much  as  the  health- 
ful amount  of  blood  is  proportionate  to  the  size  and  age. 

"It  is  known  how  much  air  a  man's  lungs,  in  perfect  and 
full  healthful  operation,  should  hold,  by  measuring  it  as  we 
would  measure  water,  by  transferring  it  from  a  vessel  whose 
capacity  was  not  known  into  one  whose  capacity  was  known. 
If,  then,  I  find  that  every  man  of  thousands,  who  is  in  perfect 
health,  emits  a  certain  amount  of  air  from  his  lungs,  I  con- 
clude that  any  other  man,  under  similar  circumstances,  who 
gives  from  his  lungs  an  equal  amount  of  air,  must  be  in  good 
health,  as  far  as  his  lungs  are  concerned,  and  every  year 
accumulates  its  additional  proofs  of  the  same  great  fact ;  and 
when  it  is  known  that  the  lungs  work  fully  and  well,  an  im- 
mense burden  is  at  once  removed  from  the  mind  of  the  phy- 
sician, as  well  as  patient,  for  he  has  less  to  do  —  the  patient 
has  less  to  dread. 

"  All  that  the  Spirometer  does  (or  Breath-Measurer,  which 
is  its  literal  signification) ,  is  to  measure  the  amount  of  air  con- 
tained in  any  man's  lungs  with  mathematical  certainty  and 
precision,  down  to  the  fraction  of  a  single  cubic  inch.  Thus 
far  the  patient  can  see,  as  well  as  the  physician,  what  is  his 
actual  measure,  and  by  comparing  it  with  what  it  ought  to  be 
in  health,  he  can  have  some  idea  of  what  he  has  to  do,  and  of 
his  present  condition. 

"We  all  must  know  that  if  a  man's  lungs,  in  health,  should 
hold  three  hundred  cubic  inches,  they  would,  if  half  gone,  cer- 
tainly not  measure  over  one  hundred  and  fifty,  and  so  of  any 
other  proportion,  down  to  an  inch. 

"The  two  important  uses  to  be  made  of  this  most  invalua- 
ble principle  are,  — 

"First.  If  a  man  can  only  expire  his  full  healthful  quota  of 
air,  he  most  assuredly  cannot  have  actual  consumption,  what- 
ever else  may  be  the  matter  with  him  ;  and  the  knowledge  of 
this  one  fact  alone,  arrived  at  by  such  unmistakable  evidence, 
is  of  incomputable  worth  to  any  invalid,  not  only  relieving 
him  of  the  weight  of  a  million  mill-stones,  but  in  affording 
him  an  important  means  of  restoration  —  hopefulness  ;  for  we 
almost  all  instinctively  feel,  if  it  is  not  consumption,  there  is 
at  least  a  chance  of  life ;  but  if  it  is  consumption,  there  is  no 
hope. 


32  MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS. 

"  Second.  The  next  important  practical  deduction  is  of  a 
twofold  character. 

"  If  the  lungs  do  not  give  out  their  full  healthful  amount  of 
air,  it  is  because  they  are  actually  affected,  or  are  threatened. 
The  instrument  does  not  tell  this  ;  it  must  be  determined  by 
the  mature  judgment  of  the  experienced  physician. 

"If  the  lungs  be  in  a  consumptive  decay,  the  pulse  and 
auscultation,  vrith  the  data  already  afforded  by  measurement, 
will  detect  this  state  of  things  with  a  degree  of  certainty  which 
is  most  admirable  ;  and  this  certainty  is  made  doubly  sure,  if, 
being  under  treatment  a  short  time,  his  lungs  measure  less 
week  after  week,  for  then  he  is  certainly  dying  by  inches. 

"  But  it  does  not  follow  because  a  man  does  not  measure 
to  his  full  standard,  that  he  is  consumptive ;  it  only  shows 
the  one  thing,  that  he  is  defective  as  to  the  action  and  capacity 
of  his  lungs ;  that  deficiency  may  be  the  result  of  decay,  or 
debility,  or  from  the  lungs  being  crowded  with  phlegm  or 
other  fluids  :  if  the  deficiency  is  not  from  decay,  proper  treat- 
ment will  diminish  that  deficiency  from  week  to  week,  because 
the  treatment  invites  back  the  action  of  the  lungs.  Thus  it  is 
that  the  gradual  increase  in  the  capacity  of  the  lungs  to  hold 
air,  when  that  capacity,  by  any  cause,  has  been  diminished,  is 
demonstrative  of  a  return  towards  health. 

"On  the  other  hand,  as  persons  are  declining,  the  measure- 
ment decreases  week  by  week,  until  there  is  scarce  breath 
enough  to  enable  them  to  cross  the  room,  and  soon  they  step 
into  the  grave. 

"A    WEIGHTY    CONSIDERATION. 

w  Common  consumption  comes  on  by  slow  degrees,  and  I 
have  never  known  a  case  that  was  not  preceded,  for  months, 
by  an  inability  of  the  lungs  to  measure  their  full  standard. 
I  consider  it  wholly  impossible  for  a  man  to  have  actual  con- 
sumption, until  he  has  not  been  able  for  months  to  measure 
the  full  amount  of  air.  This  deficit  in  the  measurement  of 
the  lungs  never  fails  to  exist  in  any  case  of  clearly  defined 
consumption;  and,  inasmuch  as  it  always  precedes  consump- 
tion, its  existence  for  some  months  in  succession  ought  to  be 
considered  a  symptom  of  consumption  in  its  early  stages,  and 
a  course  of  treatment  should  be  adopted,  which  would  anni- 
hilate that  deficit  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 


MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS.  33 

"  To  show  how  certainly  this  deficit  of  lung  capacity,  or 
lung  action  is  removed,  when  it  exists  not  as  an  effect  of  a 
decay  of  the  lungs,  but  as  an  effect  of  imperfect  action,  I  give 
here  a  few  cases. 

KC.  W.  F.,  aged  seventeen,  an  only  son  of  a  wealthy  family, 
was  placed  under  my  care  May  26,  1852.  Thin  in  flesh,  pain  in 
side,  sore  throat,  tightness  across  the  breast,  short  breath, 
difficult  to  fetch  a  long  breath,  troublesome  running  and 
sniffling  of  the  nose,  a  weak  back,  with  other  indications  of  a 
weakly  constitution.  The  measurement  of  his  lungs  should 
have  been  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  cubic  inches ;  their 
actual  capacity  was  two  hundred. 

Date.  Tulse.  Weight.          Breathing.     Lung  Measure. 

1852,  May    26  72  103  16  200 
June      2               72             103             16  206 

9  72  103|  16  216 

24  72  107  16  238 

July    19  88  104  20  216 

23  82  103  18  216 
Aug.      7  78  105  15  230 

24  76  1071  16  238 
Sept.    29  72  UH  16  250 

1853,  Nov.      8  72  121 1  16  252 

"  The  parents  of  this  case,  particularly  the  mother,  visited 
me  at  different  times,  expressing  the  deepest  solicitude,  and 
exhibiting  an  abiding  impression  that  their  child,  upon  whom 
so  many  hopes  were  hung,  was  certainly  going  into  a  decline, 
especially  as  he  had  grown  up  rapidly,  and  was  a  slim,  nar- 
row-breasted child. 

"  The  reader  will  perceive  with  what  admirable  promptness 
the  lungs  answered  to  the  means  used  for  their  development, 
in  the  very  first  fortnight,  and  with  that  increase  of  action  a 
corresponding  increase  in  flesh,  so  that  in  four  months,  and 
they  embracing  the  hottest  of  the  year,  when  most  persons 
lose  both  flesh  and  strength,  he  had  gained  eight  and  a  half 
pounds,  while  the  capacity  of  his  lungs  for  receiving  air  had 
increased  one-fifth  that  is,  fifty  cubic  inches,  and  at  the  end 
of  a  year,  when  he  called  as  a  friend,  was  still  gaining  in 


34  MEASUREMENT  OF  THE  LUNGS. 

flesh,  and  strength,  and  vigor,  with  no  indication  apparent  or 
covert,  of  any  disease  whatever. 

"  What  untold  treasure  would  these  parents  have  given, 
when  their  child  was  first  brought  to  me  for  examination,  to 
have  known  that  the  very  next  year  their  son  would  have  been 
one  of  the  most  hearty,  healthy,  manly-looking  young  men 
of  his  age  in  New  York  ;  and  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
he  would  have  dwindled  away,  like  a  flower  prematurely 
withered,  had  his  case  been  neglected,  in  the  vain  hope  of  his 
' growing  out  of  it!' 

"The  reader  will  notice,  that  on  the  19th  of  July,  every 
symptom  became  unfavorable ;  his  weight  diminished,  his 
breathing  was  more  rapid,  and  his  lung  measurement  declined 
largely, —  the  reason  is,  that  he  left  the  city  in  June,  and 
spent  some  weeks  at  Newport  and  Saratoga,  with  his  parents, 
intermitting  all  remedial  means ;  but,  as  soon  as  he  returned 
to  New  York,  and  gave  diligent  attention  to  what  was  required 
of  him,  his  symptoms  began  at  once  to  abate,  and  he  steadily 
improved  to  his  recovery.  '  The  Springs '  have  proved  the 
grave  of  many  young  people  with  consumptive  symptoms, 
and  older  consumptives  generally  get  worse  there.  The  high 
feeding,  or  get  what  you  can  system  of  diet  at  watering- 
places,  fashionable  hotels,  and  boarding-houses,  their  Lillipu- 
tian, one-windowed  rooms,  from  one  to  'five-pair  back,'  the 
midnight  clatter  along  interminable  passages,  the  tardy,  or  no 
answer  to  bell-call,  the  lookout  from  your  chamber  window 
over  some  stable,  side  alley,  or  neighbor's  back  yard ;  these, 
with  the  coldness,  and  utter  want  of  sympathy  at  such  places, 
would  soon  make  a  well  man  sick,  and  will  kill  instead  of 
cure,  the  consumptive.  They  want,  instead  of  these,  the 
free,  fresh  mountain  air,  the  plain,  substantial  food  of  the 
country  form-house,  the  gallop  along  the  highways,  the  climb- 
ing over  the  hills  by  day,  and  the  nightly  reunions  with  fam- 
ily, and  kindred,  and  friends.  And  yet  the  million  stereo- 
type this  mistake,  against  all  reason  and  common  sense. 
Only  now  and  then  is  one  found  to  choose  the  better  way, 
against  troops  of  remonstrants  and  opposers,  who  never  had 
experience,  who  never  think  for  themselves, —  and  that  is  the 
brave  man  who  gets  well,  especially  when  he  is  determined  to 
do  so." 


THE  LUNGS.  35 


THE  LUNGS. 

The  lungs  of  a  common  man  contain  about  one  hundred  and 
seventy  millions  of  little  bladders,  or  air  cells,  or  little  holes  of 
different  sizes,  as  in  a  sponge,  and  if  these  were  cut  open 
and  spread  out,  they  would  cover  a  space  thirty  times  greater 
than  the  man's  skin  would.  Over  one  side  of  this  vast  surface 
the  blood  is  spread  out,  by  means  of  very  small  blood  vessels  ; 
on  the  other  side  the  air  is  diffused,  and  the  substance  of 
these  little  bladders  is  so  thin,  that  the  blood  and  air,  in  effect, 
come  in  contact,  and  the  result  of  this  contact  is  purification, 
heat,  and  life;  and  death  is  the  result,1  if  this  contact  is  pre- 
vented for  three  minutes  :  the  reader  will  feel,  therefore,  how 
great  is  the  necessity  for  a  constant  and  full  supply  of  pure 
air  to  the  lungs.  Hence  the  reason  that  those  who  live  out  of 
doors  the  most,  live  the  longest,  other  things  being  equal. 
Of  the  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  who  die  every  year 
in  England  and  Wales,  of  consumption,  the  greater  number 
is  among  indoor  laborers.  This  is  the  reason,  too,  why  the 
families  of  the  rich  in  cities  soon  become  extinct :  in  sum- 
mer they  stay  in  the  house  to  keep  out  of  the  sun,  and  in  the 
winter  to  keep  out  of  the  cold ;  their  faces  are  pale,  their 
skin  is  flabby,  and  their  limbs  are  weak ;  a  young  girl  is  put 
out  of  breath  if  she  runs  across  the  street ;  and  seldom  a  day 
passes  without  a  complaint  of  a  headache,  or  bad  cold,  or 
chilliness,  or  want  of  appetite ;  while  the  old  father  and 
mother  of  sixty  winters  and  more,  who  lived  in  log  cabins, 
cutting  wood,  hoeing  corn,  building  fences,  hauling  rails, 
feeding  cattle,  spinning  flax,  weaving  jeans  in  the  old  loom- 
house  during  the  day,  and  knitting  socks  in  the  chimney-cor- 
ner at  night,  going  to  bed  a  little  after  dark,  and  getting  up 
to  work  before  day,  they  scarcely  know  what  an  ache  or  a 
pain  is,  can  eat  heartily  three  times  a  day,  and  are  sound 
asleep  in  five  minutes  after  the  head  reaches  the  pillow ;  and, 
what  is  perhaps  better,  are  always  forbearing,  good-natured, 
cheerful,  hospitable,  and  kind,  while  their  city  progeny  are 
poor,  helpless,  fretful,  complaining  invalids  ;  heirs  to  millions 
they  may  possibly  live  to  inherit  for  a  brief  period,  but  never 
can  enjoy. 


36  SHANDY  AND   THROAT  DISEASE. 

A  tall  man  will  take  in  at  a  full  breath  nine  pints  of  air, 
while  in  ordinary  breathing  he  takes  in  one  pint,  or  forty 
cubic  inches.  If  he  be  all  at  once  deprived  of  this  whole 
forty  inches,  he  will  die  in  three  minutes ;  and  if  death  results 
from  a  total  deprivation,  an  injury  to  health  and  life  must 
take  place  in  proportion  as  the  amount  breathed  is  less  than 
forty  inches.  For  example,  of  a  hundred  letter-pressmen, 
working  in  a  room  having  less  than  five  hundred  cubic  feet 
of  air  to  breathe,  thirteen  per  cent,  had  spitting  of  blood 
induced ;  while  as  many  men  having  more  than  six  hundred 
feet,  gave  only  four  per  cent,  of  spitting  blood :  showing  that 
that  most  fatal  symptom  of  consumption  is  brought  on  in  pro- 
portion as  men  breathe  less  pure  air  than  health  requires  ;  the 
effect  being  the  same  whether  there  are  not  lungs  to  receive 
it,  or  whether  there  be  not  the  air  to  be  received. 

It  is  with  food  as  with  air ;  a  person  soon  dies  if  wholly 
deprived  of  either,  but  will  gradually  and  a  long  time  linger, 
if  not  quite  enough  is  given  for  the  wants  of  the  system  ;  and 
all  are  familiar  with  the  fact,  that  consumptives  gradually  die, 
as  the  lungs,  by  decay,  become  less  and  less  able  to  receive 
the  due  amount  of  air. 


BRANDY  AND   THROAT  DISEASE. 

IN  several  instances  persons  have  applied  to  me  who  had 
been  advised  to  take  brandy  freely  for  a  throat  affection. 
None  but  an  ignorant  man,  or  a  drunkard,  would  give  such 
advice ;  it  is  warranted  by  no  one  principle  in  medicine,  rea- 
son, or  common  sense.  The  throat  is  inflamed,  the  brandy 
inflames  the  whole  body,  and  the  throat  affection,  being  less 
urgent  from  its  being  scattered  over  a  smaller  surface,  is  less 
felt,  and  the  excitement  of  the  liquor  gives  a  general  feeling 
of  wellness,  until  the  system  becomes  accustomed  to  the  stim- 
ulus, and  then  the  throat,  body,  and  the  man  all  the  more 
speedily  go  to  ruin  together. 

I  have  in  my  mind,  while  writing  these  lines,  the  melan- 
choly history  of  two  young  men,  one  from  Kentucky  and  the 
other  from  Missouri,  who  were  advised  to  drink  brandy 


SIR  ASTLEY  COOPERS  BATH.  37 

freely  three  times  a  day,  for  a  throat  complaint ;  one  of  them, 
within  a  year,  became  a  confirmed  drunkard,  and  lost  his 
property,  and  will  leave  an  interesting  family  in  want  within 
another  year ;  the  other  was  one  of  the  most  high-minded, 
honorable  young  men  I  have  lately  known  ;,  he  was  the  only 
son  of  a  widow,  and  she  was  rich ;  within  six  months  he 
became  a  regular  toper,  lost  his  business,  spent  all  his  money, 
and  left  secretly  for  California,  many  thousands  of  dollars  in 
debt. 


SIR   ASTLEY   COOPER'S   BATH. 

SIR  ASTLEY  COOPER  was  the  most  eminent  surgeon  of  his 
time,  and  he  lived  to  a  good  old  age  ;  and  although  he  wrore 
silk  stockings  in  the  depth  of  an  English  winter,  he  seldom 
took  cold,  which  exemption  he  attributed  mainly  to  his  morn- 
ing bath,  which  he  describes  as  follows  :  — 

"Immediately  on  rising  from  bed,  and  having  all  previously 
ready,  take  off  your  night  dress,  then  take  up  from  your 
earthen  pan  of  two  gallons  of  water,  a  towel,  quite  wet,  but 
not  dropping  ;  begin  at  your  head,  rubbing  hair  and  face,  and 
neck  and  ears  well ;  then  wrap  yourself  behind  and  before, 
from  neck  to  chest,  your  arms  and  every  portion  of  your 
body.  Remand  your  towel  into  the  pan,  charge  it  afresh  with 
water,  and  repeat  once  all  I  have  mentioned,  excepting  the 
head,  unless  that  be  in  a  heated  state,  when  you  may  do  so, 
and  with  advantage.  Three  minutes  will  now  have  elapsed. 
Throw  your  towel  into  the  pan,  and  then  proceed,  with  two 
coarse  long  towels,  to  scrub  your  head,  and  face,  and  body, 
front  and  rear,  when  four  minutes  will  have  you  in  a  glow ; 
then  wash  and  hard  rub  your  feet,  brush  your  hair,  and  com- 
plete your  toilet ;  and  trust  me,  that  this  will  give  new  zest 
to  your  existence.  A  mile  of  walking  may  be  added  with 
advantage." 

Women,  and  those  who  are  delicate,  and  who  are  easily 
chilled,  may  modify  Sir  Astley's  mode,  by  adopting  that 
which  is  described  in  the  following  language  of  a  lady  to  a 
lady :  — 


,161187' 


38  SIR  ASTLET   COOPER'S  BATH. 

A  LADY'S  BATH. 

"  You  only  want  a  basin  of  water,  a  towel,  a  rag,  and  five 
minutes'  time.  When  you  get  up  in  the  morning,  pin  a  petti- 
coat very  loosely  at  the  waist,  draw  your  arms  out  of  the 
sleeves  of  your  chemise,  and  let  it  drop  to  your  waist.  Take 
your  rag,  well  wetted,  and  slap  your  head  and  shoulders,  rub 
your  arms  and  chest,  and  throw  handfuls  of  water  around 
your  ears  and  back  of  the  neck.  Then  throw  your  towel 
across  your  back,  and  '  saw '  it  dry.  Rub  fast  until  you  are 
quite  dry.  Put  on  your  chemise  sleeves,  draw  on  a  night 
gown,  to  keep  from  chilling,  while  you  tuck  your  skirts  up 
under  one  arm,  until  you  wash  and  dry  one  limb  ;  drop  that 
side,  and  do  the  other  likewise,  and  be  sure  that  the  small  of 
the  back  and  sides  get  their  full  share  of  rubbing.  This  done, 
sit  down,  dip  one  foot  in  the  basin,  rub  and  dry  it,  put  on 
your  stocking  and  shoe,  and  then  wash  the  other." 

When  needed,  I  am  in  the  habit  of  advising  the  following, 
which,  as  a  general  rule,  I  think  preferable  to  all  others,  be- 
cause it  is  easily  performed,  costs  nothing,  and  is  practicable 
wherever  there  is  a  rag  and  a  pint  of  cold  water ;  it  leaves  no 
ground  of  excuse  for  not  performing  it,  and  consequently  there 
is  no  obstacle  to  its  general  employment. 

It  is  my  opinion,  founded  on  observation,  that  a  daily  bath, 
to  one  in  good  health,  is  not  only  not  beneficial,  but  is  injuri- 
ous, while  it  deprives  a  man  of  a  valuable  prophylactic  when 
he  is  really  sick.  A  man  who  is  well,  should  let  himself 
alone  !  I  know  very  well  there  is  a  kind  of  furor  in  certain 
quarters  about  cold  baths,  and  shower  baths.  It  is  often 
described  as  a  delightful  operation,  and  its  healthfulness 
painted  in  glowing  language.  But  is  it  true  ?  It  is  wonder- 
ful how  a  community  will  sometimes  take  up  a  plausible  idea, 
and  run  away  with  it,  never  stopping  to  investigate  its  pro- 
priety, its  truthfulness,  or  its  safety. 

A  daily  bath,  shower  or  otherwise,  is  a  modern  invention, 
devised  to  sell  bath-tubs.  I  personally  have  known  but  two 
men  who  acknowledged  to  a  daily  shower  bath,  literally  a 
shower  bath,  every  day.  One  of  them  'died  years  ago  of 
chronic  diarrhoea,  the  other  was  a  hydropathist,  a  great,  stout, 
raw-boned  six  footer.  I  sat  at  the  same  table  with  him  for 


SIB  ASTLEY  COOPER'S  BATH.  39 

many  months  ;  ho  was  always  bathing,  and  was  always  sick  ; 
he  would  frequently  souse  himself  in  cold  water,  head  and 
ears,  two  or  three  times  a  day.  Does  any  reader  of  mine 
know  any  old  man  who  has  been  a  daily  cold-water  bather  all 
his  days,  or  even  for  any  five  years  of  his  life?  Did  Priess- 
nitz,  who  gloried  in  cold  water,  live  to  be  an  old  man  ?  Does 
the  observant  reader  know  any  man,  dead  or  alive,  who  prac- 
tised a  daily  cold-water  bath  for  three  consecutive  years,  and 
who  enjoyed  any  remarkable  good  health,  and  who  did  not 
have  good  health  before  he  began?  Have  we  any  written 
record  of  any  nation,  whose  inhabitants  practised,  as  a  general 
thing,  daily  cold-water  bathings  ?  These  are  inquiries  which 
every  reflecting  man  ought  to  make,  and  when  they  are 
answered,  to  conduct  himself  accordingly. 

When  a  man  is  not  well,  bathing  of  some  kind  is  advisable 
under  certain  circumstances,  but  it  should  not  be  continued 
too  long ;  as  soon  as  he  is  well  he  ought  to  stop.  Once  or 
twice  a  week  persons  may  advantageously  perform  the  follow- 
ing, if  in  good  health,  for  the  sake  of  personal  cleanliness ; 
if  ailing,  oftener  :  — 

TOWEL     BATH. 

As  a  general  rule,  the  best  method  is  to  dip  a  coarse  cloth, 
or  a  coarse  linen,  or  tow,  or  hempen  glove,  in  cold  water ; 
squeeze  it  so  that  the  water  shall  not  dribble  about ;  lay  it  flat 
on  the  hand,  and  with  breast  projecting  and  mouth  closed, 
begin  over  the  breast,  on  getting  out  of  bed  in  the  morning, 
and  rub  fast  and  hard,  gradually  extending  it  all  over  the 
body,  as  far  as  you  can  reach  in  every  direction.  This  opera- 
tion should  be  performed  within  ten  minutes  in  summer,  and 
within  three  or  four  in  winter.  Keep  on  the  stockings,  and 
when  done,  dress  quickly,  and  goto  the  fire,  if  in  cool  weather, 
or  take  some  exercise,  active  enough  to  make  you  feel  com- 
fortably warm. 


40  TEE  JOKING  CLERGYMAN. 


THE  JOKING  CLERGYMAN. 

REV.  DR.  BYLES  was  the  most  original  compound  of  reli- 
gion and  mirth,  conspicuous  in  the  latter  part  of  the  last  cen- 
tury in  New  England.  With  a  good  heart,  a  mind  of  stable 
principles,  and  a  decent  reverence  for  his  holy  office,  he  nev- 
ertheless possessed  a  buoyant  and  genial  flow  of  spirits,  con- 
stantly running  over  with  puns  or  witty  conceits.  He  main- 
tained his  connection  with  the  Hollis  Street  church  for  forty- 
three  years.  He  was  a  hale,  yet  aged  man,  when  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  began,  and  in  his  political  predilections  leaned 
towards  the  royal  side. 

In  May,  1777,  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  arrest  him  as  a 
Tory.  He  was  condemned  to  be  placed  on  board  a  guard- 
ship,  and  sent  to  England.  Subsequently  the  sentence  was 
changed  to  confinement  in  his  house.  A  sentinel  was  kept 
before  his  door,  day  and  night,  whom  he  was  wont  to  call  his 
observ-a-tory .  At  the  last,  the  vigilance  of  the  board  of  war 
relaxed,  and  the  sentinel  disappeared ;  after  a  while  he  was 
replaced,  and  after  a  little,  removed  altogether.  The  doctor 
used  pleasantly  to  remark  that  he  had  been  "guarded,  regard- 
ed, and  disregarded."  Once  the  doctor  tried  to  have  the  sen- 
tinel let  him  go  after  some  milk  for  his  family ;  but  he  was 
firm,  and  would  not ;  he  then  argued  the  case  with  the  honest 
but  simple  fellow,  and  actually  induced  him  to  go  after  the 
milk,  while  he,  the  doctor,  kept  guard  over  himself.  The 
neighbors  were  filled  with  wonderment  to  see  their  pastor 
walking  in  measured  strides  before  his  own  door  with  the 
sentinel's  gun  at  his  shoulder,  and  when  the  story  got  abroad, 
it  furnished  food  for  town  gossip  and  merriment  for  several 
days. 

The  doctor  had  rather  a  shrewish  wife  ;  so  one  daj  he  called 
at  the  old  distillery  that  used  to  stand  on  Lincoln  Street,  and 
accosted  the  proprietor  thus  : — 

"Do  you  still?" 

"That's  my  business,"  replied  Mr.  Hill,  the  proprietor. 

"  Well,  then,"  said  the  doctor,  "I  should  like  to  have  you 
go  and  still  my  wife." 


TOBACCO:  ITS  USE  AND  END.  41 

I 

He  served  rather  an  ungallant  trick  upon  this  same  good 
lady  at  another  time.  He  had  some  curiosities,  which  people 
occasionally  called  to  see.  One  day  two  ladies  called.  Mrs. 
B.  was  r  in  the  suds,"  and  begged  her  husband  to  shut  her  in 
a  closet  while  he  exhibited  his  curiosities.  He  did  so.  After 
exhibiting  everything  else  he  said,  "Now,  ladies,  I  have  re- 
served my  greatest  curiosity  to  the  last ;  "  and,  opening  the 
door,  he  exhibited  Mrs.  B.  to  the  ladies. 

There  was  an  unseemly  "slough  of  despond"  before  his 
door,  in  the  shape  of  a  quagmire,  which  he  had  repeatedly 
urged  the  town  authorities  to  remove.  At  last  two  of  the 
town  officers  in  a  carriage  got  fairly  stuck  in  it.  They  whip- 
ped the  horse,  they  hawed  and  geed,  but  they  could  not  get 
out.  Dr.  Byles  saw  them  from  his  window.  He  stepped  out 
into  the  street.  "  I  am  delighted,  gentlemen,"  said  he,  rubbing 
his  hands  with  glee,  "  to  see  you  stirring  in  this  matter  at 
last !  "  The  sore  in  the  ground  was  healed  soon  after. 

Going  along  the  street  one  day,  he  found  himself  in  a  great 
crowd  near  the  Old  North  Church. 

"  What  is  the  matter  ?  "  inquired  he  of  a  bystander. 

"  Why,  sir,  there  is  a  man  going  to  fly  from  the  steeple." 

"Poh!  poh!"  said  he.  "Do  you  all  come  here  to  see  a 
man  fly?  Why,  I  have  seen  a  horse-fly." 

A  learned  lady  of  Boston  despatched  a  note  to  him  on  the 
Great  Dark  Day  (May  19,  1780),  in  the  following  style  :- 

"  Dear  Doctor  :   How  do  you  account  for  this  darkness  ?  " 

His  reply  was,  — 

"  Dear  Madam  :  I  am  as  much  in  the  dark  as  you  are." 

Reader,  study  now  to  have  a  healthful  old  age,  and  then, 
if  good,  you  can  afford  to  be  mirthful,  like  the  brave  old 
dominie. 


TOBACCO:    ITS  USE  AND  END. 

SOME  years  ago  a  youth,  aged  sixteen,  while  at  college, 
had  a  severe  toothache.  His  grandmother  gave  him  a  piece 
of  tobacco  to  put  in  his  mouth  to  remove  the  pain.  It  did 
so  ;  and  from  that  time  he  chewed  it,  for  nine  or  ten  3'ears, 
almost  incessantly.  While  at  college,  and  during  a  three 


42  TOBACCO:  ITS   USE  AND  END. 

p 

years'  course  in  a  theological  seminary,  he  applied  himself 
closely,  paid  no  attention  to  the  rules  of  health,  took  little 
or  no  exercise,  and,  soon  after  he  was  settled  as  a  clergyman, 
he  became  dyspeptic,  and  during  warm  weather  suffered 
greatly  from  depression  of  spirits  and  mental  lassitude,  which 
seemed  to  incapacitate  him  for  the  proper  discharge  of  minis- 
terial duty ;  and  as  this  duty  had  to  be  performed,  he  began 
to  use  brandy  and  water  to  dispel  the  lassitude  ;  but  only  on 
occasions  of  making  a  public  effort,  at  first.  In  three  or  four 
years,  he  felt  that  the  use  of  spirits  of  some  kind  was  a  daily 
necessity.  If  omitted  for  a  single  day,  he  could  not  bring 
his  mind  to  bear  on  any  subject.  About  this  time  he  began 
to  find  that  he  could  not  calculate  with  certainty  upon  the 
effects  of  the  stimulus,  as  to  time  or  amount.  Occasionally 
it  almost  overpowered  him ;  and  as  irretrievable  disgrace 
would  have  been  the  result,  he  substituted  laudanum,  some 
twenty  drops,  thrice  a  day,  or  often  enough  to  keep  up  a 
uniform  sensation.  Whenever  the  stimulus  was  about  ex- 
hausted he  would  begin  to  gape :  this  was  the  signal  for  a 
new  supply.  After  a  while  laudanum  was  not  strong  enough, 
and  he  began  to  take  the  pure  opium,  the  amount  being 
increased  from  time  to  time,  until  he  found  himself  taking 
half  an  ounce  a  week,  which  is  two  hundred  and  forty  grains, 
or  nearly  thirty-five  grains  a  day,  —  equivalent  to  three  or 
four  table-spoonfuls  of  laudanum,  —  which  is  thirty  times 
more  than  a  dose  for  a  full-grown  man.  "At  this  time,"  he 
writes,  "I  became  greatly  disordered  in  body,  not  merely 
through  opium,  but  also  through  the  baneful  habits  connected 
therewith.  I  sat  at  my  books  and  papers,  day  after  day, 
from  breakfast  until  past  midnight,  in  a  hot  study  filled  with 
smoke  from  a  cigar,  kept  perpetually  alight.  I  suffered 
martyrdom  from  costiveness,  often  going  nearly  a  week 
without  a  passage.  Sometimes,  too,  I  got  into  a  physical 
state  which  opium  would  not  stimulate,  and  then  I  was  com- 
pelled to  employ  alcohol  !  But  alcohol,  acting  upon  opium- 
drugged  nerves,  is  exceedingly  apt  to  produce  maniacal 
intoxication."  At  this  juncture  he  made  an  effort  to  break 
up  these  habits.  For  ten  days  and  nights  he  was  not  con- 
scious of  one  moment  of  sleep ;  he  was  half  delirious  for 
several  days ;  the  blood  in  his  veins  felt  like  boiling  water, 


TOBACCO:  ITS   USE  AND  END.  43 

and  rushed  with  such  fury  to  the  head  as  to  make  him  feel 
as  if  it  would  split  open.  For  a  whole  year  he  was  as  feeble 
as  a  child,  "a  walking  depository  of  aches  and  distressing 
sensations." 

He  then  quitted  his  profession,  and  retired  to  the  country 
to  study  law.  He  was  attacked  with  neuralgia  in  the  head 
and  face ;  this  at  length  became  unendurable,  and  he  was 
advised  to  take  morphine  and  quinine,  which  fixed  the  habit 
of  using  opium  as  firmly  as  ever.  For  two  years  he  made  no 
decided  effort  to  escape  from  his  habits,  when  he  applied  for 
admission  into  an  asylum,  and  for  eighteen  months  never  felt 
well,  free  from  pain  "for  one  remembered  day."  Troubles 
came,  and  he  returned  to  the  use  of  his  opiate,  and  continued 
for  two  years,  when  he  found  himself  using  sixty  grains  of 
sulphate  of  morphine,  that  is,  nearly  nine  grains  a  day,  or 
thirty-six  times  more  than  a  common  dose  for  a  strong  man, 
—  enough  to  destroy  life  in  a  few  hours. 

He  now  took  charge  of  a  country  parish,  where  he  remained 
for  two  years  ;  but  found  it  impossible  to  perform  his  official 
duties,  mentally  or  physically,  without  the  aid  of  a  quarter  of 
an  ounce  of  morphine,  and  sometimes  more,  a  week,  which 
is  equal  to  some  seven  hundred  grains  of  opium,  or  sixty 
drops  to  a  dram  or  tea-spoonful,  —  equalling  .ten  table- 
spoonfuls  of  laudanum  a  day,  or  twenty-four  hundred  drops ; 
and  when  it  is  remembered  that  half  a  drop  of  laudanum  is 
considered  a  dose  for  a  young  infant,  the  reader  may  have 
some  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  daily  portion.  He  is  now 
striving  to  do  with  from  half  an  ounce  to  an  ounce  of  opium 
a  week,  averaging  some  five  table-spoons  of  laudanum  a  day. 
Time  only  can  tell  the  end  of  this  strife.  Most  probably  it 
will  be  the  gutter  and  the  grave. 

Will  any  young  man,  especially  any  aspirant  for  the  min- 
istry, after  reading  this  statement  of  actual  facts,  dare  allow 
the  first,  or  another  particle  of  tobacco,  or  any  other  mere 
stimulant,  ever  pass  his  lips  ?  You  are  commanded  to  pray 
every  day,  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation ; "  can  you  thus 
pray,  as  often  as  the  morning  comes,  that  you  shall  not  be 
abandoned  to  the  power  of  temptation,  and  yet  that  very 
day,  perhaps  that  very  hour,  first  expose  and  then  yield 
yourself  to  it?  If  so,  then  it  well  becomes  you  to  investigate 
anew  "what  manner  of  spirit  ye  are  of." 


44  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

The  author  feels  that  any  comment  on  the  history  just  given 
would  but  weaken  it,  and  he  yields  the  young  reader  to  the 
power  of  fact  and  conscience. 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

THERE  is  no  necessary  reason  why  men  should  not  generally 
live  to  the  full  age  of  threescore  years  and  ten,  in  health  and 
comfort.  That  they  do  not  do  so,  is  because  they  consume  tdo 
much  food  and  too  little  pure  air;  they  take  too  much  medi- 
cine and  too  little  exercise.  And  when,  by  inattention  to 
these  things,  they  become  diseased,  they  die  chiefly,  not 
because  such  disease  is  necessarily  fatal,  but  because  the 
symptoms,  which  Nature  designs  to  admonish  of  its  pres- 
ence, are  disregarded,  until  too  late  for  remedy.  And  in 
no  class  of  ailments  are  delays  so  uniformly  attended  with 
fatal  results  as  in  affections  of  the  throat  and  lungs.  How- 
ever terrible  may  have  been  the  ravages  of  the  Asiatic  cholera 
in  this  country,  I  know  of  no  locality  where,  in  the  course  of 
a  single  year,  it  destroyed  ten  per  cent,  of  the  population. 
Yet,  taking  England  and  the  United  States  together,  twenty 
per  cent,  of  the  mortality  is,  every  year,  from  diseases  of  the 
lungs  alone.  Amid  such  a  fearful  fatality,  no  one  dares  say 
he  shall  certainly  escape,  while  every  one,  without  exception, 
will  most  assuredly  suffer,  either  in  his  own  person  or  in  that 
of  some  one  near  and  dear  to  him,  by  this  same  universal 
scourge.  No  man,  then,  can  take  up  these  pages  who  is  not 
interested,  to  the  extent  of  life  and  death,  in  the  important 
inquiry,  What  can  be  done  to  mitigate  this  great  evil?  It  is 
not  the  object  of  this  article  to  answer  that  question,  but  to 
act  it  out ;  and  the  first  great  essential  step  thereto  is  to  im- 
press upon  the  common  mind,  in  language  adapted  to  common 
readers,  a  proper  understanding  of  the  first  symptoms  of  these 
ruthless  diseases. 

Every  reader  of  common  intelligence,  and  of  the  most 
ordinary  observation,  must  know  that  countless  numbers  of 
people,  in  every  direction,  have  been  saved  from  certain 
death,  by  having  understood  the  premonitory  symptoms  of 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  45 

cholera,  and  acting  up  to  their  knowledge.  The  physician 
does  not  live,  who,  in  the  course  of  ordinary  practice,  cannot 
point  to  a  little  army  of  the  prematurely  dead,  who  have  paid 
the  forfeit  of  their  lives  by  ignorance  or  neglect  of  the  early 
symptoms  of  consumptive  disease.  Perhaps  the  reader's  own 
heart  is,  this  instant,  smitten  at  the  sad  recollection  of  similar 
cases  in  his  own  sphere  of  observation. 

This  book  is  not  intended  to  recommend  a  medicinal  pre- 
ventive, or  a  patented  cure  for  the  diseases  named  at  the  head 
of  this  article  :  it  will  afford  no  aid  or  comfort  to  those  who 
hope,  by  its  perusal,  to  save  a  doctor's  fee,  by  a  trifling  tam- 
pering with  their  constitutions  and  their  lives.  Nor  is  it 
wished  to  make  you  believe  that  if  you  come  to  me  I  will 
cure  you.  If  you  have  symptoms  of  disease,  I  wish  you  to 
understand  their  nature  first ;  and  then  to  take  advice  from 
some  regularly  educated  physician,  who  has  done  nothing  to 
forfeit,  justly,  his  honorable  standing  among  his  brethren,  by 
the  recommendation  of  secret  medicines,  patented  contri- 
vances, or  travelling  lecturers  for  the  cure  of  certain  diseases. 
I  may  speak  of  persons  in  these  pages  who  had  certain  symp- 
toms, and,  coming  to  me,  were  permanently  cured.  You 
may  have  similar  symptoms,  and  yet  I  may  be  able  to  do 
you  no  good.  I  have  sometimes  failed  to  cure  persons  who 
had  no  symptoms  at  all.  In  other  cases,  where  but  a  single 
symptom  of  disease  existed,  and  it,  apparently,  a  very  trivial 
one,  the  malady  has  steadily  progressed  to  a  fatal  termination, 
in  spite  of  every  effort  to  the  contrary.  The  object  of  these 
statements  is  to  have  it  understood  that  I  make  no  engage- 
ment to  cure  anything  or  anybody.  The  first  great  purpose 
is  to  enable  you  to  understand  properly  any  s}rmptoms  which 
you  may  have  that  point  towards  disease  of  the  lungs ;  and, 
when  you  have  done  so,  to  persuade  you  not  to  waste  your 
time,  and  money,  and  health  in  blind  efforts  to  remove  them, 
by  taking  stuff,  of  which  you  know  little,  into  a  body  of  which 
you  know  less ;  but  go  to  a  man  of  respectability,  and  stand- 
ing, and  experience,  —  one  in  whom  you  have  confidence ; 
one  who  depends  upon  the  practice  of  his  profession  for  a 
living ;  describe  your  symptoms  according  to  your  ability, 
place  your  health  and  life  in  his  hands,  and  be  assured  that 
thus  you,  and  millions  of  others,  will  stand  the  highest  chance 


46  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

of  attaining  a  prosperous,  cheerful,  and  green  old  age.  The 
rule  should  be  universal,  and  among  all  classes,  not  only 
never  to  take  an  atom  of  medicine  for  anything,  but  not  to 
take  anything  as  a  MEDICINE,  —  not  even  a  tea-spoon  of  com- 
mon sirup  or  French  brandy,  or  a  cup  of  red  pepper  tea, 
unless  by  the  previous  advice  of  a  physician ;  because  a  spoon- 
ful of  the  purest,  simplest  sirup,  taken  several  times  a  day, 
will  eventually  destroy  the  tone  of  the  healthiest  stomach : 
and  yet  any  person  almost  would  suppose  that  a  little  sirup 
"could  do  no  harm,  if  it  did  no  good"  A  table-spoon  of  good 
brandy,  now  and  then,  is  simple  enough,  and  yet  it  has  made 
a  wreck  and  ruin  of  the  health,  and  happiness,  and  hope  of 
multitudes.  If  these  simple,  that  is,  well-known  things,  in 
their  purity,  are  used  to  such  results,  it  requires  but  little 
intelligence  to  understand  that  more  speedy  injuries  must 
follow  their  daily  employment,  morning,  noon,  and  night, 
when  they  are  sold  in  the  shape  of  "sirups,"  and  "bitters," 
and  "tonics,"  with  other  ingredients,  however  "simple"  they, 
too,  may  be. 

The  common-sense  reader  will  consider  these  sentiments 
reasonable  and  right,  and  think  it  a  very  laudable  desire  to 
diffuse  information  among  the  people  as  to  the  symptoms  of 
dangerous,  insidious,  and  wide-spreading  diseases ;  but  he 
will  not  be  prepared  for  the  information,  that  the  publication 
of  such  a  book  as  this  will  be  considered  "  unprofessional "  by 
some.  But  latitude  must  be  allowed  for  difference  of  opinion, 
else  all  progress  is  at  an  end.  Whoever  lends  a  helping  hand 
to  the  diffusion  of  useful  knowledge,  is,  in  proportion,  the 
benefactor  of  his  kind.  Whether  it  be  useful  for  man  to 
know  the  nature  and  first  symptoms  of  a  disease  which  is 
destined  to  destroy  one  out  of  every  six  in  the  country,  is  a 
question  which  each  one  must  decide  for  himself.  I  believe 
that  such  an  effort  is  useful,  and  hereby  act  accordingly. 
Experienced  physicians  constantly  feel,  in  reference  to  per- 
sons who  evidently  have  consumption,  that  it  is  too  late, 
because  the  application  had  been  too  long  delayed.  The 
great  reason  why  so  many  delay  is,  because  they  "  did  not 
think  it  was  anything  more  than  a  slight  cold."  In  other 
words,  they  were  entirely  ignorant  of  the  difference  between 
the  cough  of  a  common  cold  and  the  cough  of  consumption, 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDBED  DISEASES.  47 

and  the  general  symptoms  attendant  on  the  two.  It  is  not 
practicable  for  all  to  study  medicine,  nor  is  it  to  be  expected 
that,  for  every  cough  one  has,  he  shall  go  to  the  expense  of 
taking  medical  advice ;  it  therefore  seems  to  me  the  dictate 
of  humanity  to  make  the  necessary  information  more  acces- 
sible, and  I  know  of  no  better  way  to  accomplish  this  object 
than  by  the  general  distribution  of  a  work  like  this  :  and  when 
I  pretend  to  no  new  principle  of  cure,  no  specific,  and  no 
ability  of  success,  beyond  what  an  entire  devotion  to  one 
disease  may  give  any  ordinary  capacity,  no  further  apology 
is  necessary. 

THROAT-AIL, 

or  laryngitis,  pronounced  lare-in-Gm-tis,  is  an  affection  of 
the  top  of  the  windpipe,  where  the  voice-making  organs  are. 
answering  to  the  parts  familiarly  called  "  Adam's  apple." 
When  these  organs  are  diseased  the  voice  is  impaired,  or 
"  there  is  something  wrong  about  the  swallow." 

BRONCHITIS, 

pronounced  bron-KEE-tis,  is  an  affection  of  the  branches  of  the 
windpipe,  and,  in  its  first  stages,  is  called  a  common  cold. 

CONSUMPTION 

is  an  affection,  not  of  the  top  or  root  of  the  windpipe,  for  that 
is  throat-ail;  not  of  the  body  of  the  windpipe,  for  that  is 
croup;  not  of  the  branches  of  the  windpipe,  for  that  is  bron- 
chitis; but  it  is  an  affection  of  the  lungs  themselves,  which 
are  millions  of  little  air-ceils,  or  bladders,  of  various  sizes, 
from  that  of  a  pea  downwards,  and  are  at  the  extremities  of 
the  branches  of  the  windpipe,  as  the  buds  or  leaves  of  a  tree 
are  at  the  extremity  of  its  branches. 

What  are  the  Symptoms  of  Throat-Ail?  —  The  most  uni- 
versal symptom  is  an  impairment  of  the  voice,  which  is  more 
or  less  hoarse  or  weak.  If  there  is  no  actual  want  of  clear- 
ness of  the  sounds,  there  is  an  instinctive  clearing  of  the 
throat,  by  swallowing,  hawking,  or  hemming,  or  a  summing 
up  of  strength  to  enunciate  words.  When  this  is  continued 
for  some  time,  there  is  a  sensation  of  tiredness  about  the 


48  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

throat,  a  dull,  heavy  aching,  or  general  feeling  of  discomfort 
or  uneasiness,  coming  on  in  the  afternoon  or  evening.  In  the 
early  part  of  the  day  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind  perceptible, 
as  the  voice-muscles  have  had  time  for  rest  and  the  recovery 
of  their  powers,  during  the  night.  In  the  beginning  of  this 
disease  no  inconvenience  of  this  kind  is  felt,  except  some 
unusual  effort  has  been  made,  such  as  speaking  or  singing 
in  public.  But  as  it  progresses,  these  symptoms  manifest 
themselves  every  evening ;  then,  earlier  and  earlier  in  the  day, 
until  the  voice  is  clear  only  for  a  short  time  soon  in  the  morn- 
ing ;  next  there  is  a  constant  hoarseness  or  huskiness  from 
week  to  month,  when  the  case  is  most  generally  incurable, 
and  the  patient  dies  of  the  common  symptoms  of  consumptive 
disease. 

In  some  oases  the  patient  expresses  himself  as  having  a 
sensation  as  if  a  piece  of  wool  or  blanket  were  in  the  throat, 
or  an  aching  or  sore  feeling  running  up  the  sides  of  the  neck, 
towards  the  ears.  Some  have  a  burning,  or  raw,  sensation  at 
the  little  hollow  at  the  bottom  of  the  neck ;  others,  about 
"Adam's  apple" ;  while  a  third  class  speak  of  such  a  feeling, 
or  a  pricking,  at  a  spot  .along  the  sides  of  the  neck.  Among 
others,  the  first  symptoms  are  a  dryness  in  the  throat  after 
speaking  or  singing,  or  while  in  a  crowded  room,  or  when 
waking  up  in  the  morning.  Some  feel  as  if  there  were  some 
unusual  thickness  or  a  lumpy  sensation  in  the  throat,  at  the 
upper  part,  removed  at  once  by  swallowing  it  away  ;  but  soon 
it  comes  back  again,  giving  precisely  the  feelings  which  some 
persons  have  after  swallowing  a  pill. 

Sometimes  this  frequent  swallowing  is  most  troublesome 
after  meals.  Throat-ail  is  not,  like  many  other  diseases, 
often  getting  well  of  itself  by  being  let  alone.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  one  case  in  ten  ever  does  so,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
gradually  grows  worse,  until  the  voice  is  permanently  husky 
or  subdued ;  and  soon  the  swallowing  of  solids  or  fluids  be- 
comes painful,  food  or  drink  returns  through  the  nose,  causing 
a  feeling  of  strangulation  or  great  pain.  When  throat-ail 
symptoms  have  been  allowed  to  progress  to  this  stage,  death 
is  almost  inevitable  in  a  very  few  weeks.  Now  and  then  a 
case  may  be  saved,  but  restoration  here  is  almost  in  the 
nature  of  a  miracle. 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  49 

What  are  the  Symptoms  of  Bronchitis? — Bronchitis  is  a 
bad  cold,  and  the  experience  of  every  one  teaches  what  its 
symptoms  are.  The  medical  name  for  a  cold  is  acute  bron- 
chitis: called  acute,  because  it  comes  on  at  once,  and  lasts 
but  a  short  time,  —  a  week  or  two,  generally.  The  ailment 
that  is  commonly  denominated  bronchitis  is  what  physicians 
term  chronic  bronchitis :  called  chronic,  because  it  is  a  long 
time  in  coming  on,  and  lasts  for  months  and  years,  instead  of 
days  and  weeks.  It  is  not  like  throat-ail  or  consumption, 
which  have  a  great  many  symptoms,  almost  any  one  of  which 
may  be  absent,  and  still  the  case  be  one  of  throat-ail  or  con- 
sumption ;  but  bronchitis  has  three  symptoms,  every  one  of 
which  are  present  every  day,  and  together,  and  all  the  time, 
in  all  ages,  sexes,  constitutions,  and  temperaments.  These 
three  universal  and  essential  symptoms  are,  — 

1.  A  feeling  of  fulness,  or  binding,  or  cord-like  sensation 
about  the  breast. 

2.  A  most  harassing  cough,  liable  to  come  on  at  any  hour 
of  the  day  or  night. 

3.  A  large  expectoration  of  a  tough,  stringy,  tenacious, 
sticky,  pearly,  or  grayish-like  substance,  from  a  table-spoon- 
ful to  a  pint  or  more  a  day.     As  the  disease  progresses,  this 
becomes  darkish,  greenish,  or  yellowish  in  appearance  ;  some- 
times all  three  colors  may  be  seen  together,  until  at  last  it  is 
uniformly  yellow,   and  comes  up,   without  much   effort,  in 
mouthfuls,  that  fall  heavily,  without  saliva  or  mucus.     When 
this  is  the  case,  death  comes  in  a  very  few  weeks,  or  —  days. 

WJiat  are  the  Symptoms  of  Consumption? — A  gradual 
wasting  of  breath,  flesh,  and  strength  are  the  three  symp- 
toms, progressing  steadily  through  days,  and  weeks,  and 
months,  which  are  never  absent  in  any  case  of  true,  active, 
confirmed  consumptive  disease  that  I  have  ever  seen.  A  man 
may  have  a  daily  cough  for  fifty  years,  and  not  have  consump- 
tion. A  woman  may  spit  blood  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
and  not  have  consumption.  A  young  lady  may  breathe  forty 
times  a  minute,  and  have  a  pulse  of  a  hundred  and  forty  beats 
a  minute,  day  after  day,  for  weeks  and  months  together,  and 
not  have  consumption ;  and  men,  and  women,  and  young 
ladies  may  have  pains  in  the  breast,  and  sides,  and  shoulders, 


50  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

and  flushes  in  the  cheeks,  and  night-sweats,  and  swollen 
ankles,  aud  yet  have  not  an  atom  of  consumptive  decay  in  the 
lungs.  But  where  there  is  a  slow,  steady,  painless  decline 
of  flesh,  and  strength,  and  breath,  extending  through  weeks 
and  months  of  time,  consumption  exists,  in  all  persons,  ages, 
aud  climes,  although,  at  the  same  time,  sleep,  bowels,  appe- 
tite, spirits,  may  be  represented  as  good.  Such,  at  least,  are 
the  results  of  my  own  observation. 

The  great,  general,  common  symptoms  of  consumption  of 
the  lungs  are,  night  and  morning  cough,  pains  about  the 
breast,  easily  tired  in  walking,  except  on  level  ground, 
shortness  of  breath  on  slight  exercise,  and  general  weakness. 
These  are  the  symptoms  of  which  consumptive  persons  com- 
plain, and  as  they  approach  the  grave  these  symptoms 
gradually  increase. 

How  does  a  Person  get  Throat- Ail?  —  A  woman  walked  in 
the  Park,  in  early  spring,  nntil  a  little  heated  and  tired ;  then 
sat  down  on  a  cold  stone.  Next  day  she  had  hoarseness,  and 
a  raw,  burning  feeling  in  the  throat,  and  died  within  the  year. 

A  man  had  suffered  a  great  deal  from  sick  headache.  He 
was  advised  to  have  cold  water  poured  on  the  top  of  his  head  : 
he  did  so ;  he  had  headache  no  more.  The  throat  became 
affected ;  had  frequent  swallowing,  clearing  of  throat,  falling 
of  palate,  voice  soon  failed  in  singing,  large  red  splotches  on 
the  back  part  of  the  throat,  aud  white  lumps  at  either  side ; 
but  the  falling  of  the  palate,  and  interminable  swallowing  were 
the  great  symptoms,  making  and  keeping  him  nervous,  irri- 
table, debilitated,  and  wretched.  He  was  advised  to  take  off 
the  uvula,  but  would  not  do  it.  Had  the  nitrate  of  silver 
applied  constantly  for  three  mouths.  Tried  homoeopathy. 
After  suffering  thus  two  years,  he  came  to  me,  and,  on  a 
subsequent  visit,  said,  "It  is  wonderful,  that  for  two  years 
I  have  been  troubled  with  this  throat,  aud  nothing  would 
relieve  it,  and  now  it  is  removed  in  two  days."  That  was 
four  months  ago.  I  saw  him  in  the  street  yesterday.  He 
said  his  throat  gave  him  no  more  trouble ;  that  he  had  no 
more  chilliness,  and  had  never  taken  a  cold  since  he  came 
under  my  care,  although  formerly  "  it  was  the  easiest  thing 
in  the  world  to  take  cold." 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  51 

A  merchant  slept  in  a  steamboat  state-room,  in  Decem- 
ber, with  a  glass  broken  out.  Woke  up  next  morning 
with  a  hoarseness  and  sore  throat.  For  several  months  did 
nothing,  then  applied  to  a  physician.  Counter-irritants  were 
employed,  without  any  permanent  effect.  At  the  end  of  four 
years,  he  came  to  me  with  "  a  sort  of  uneasy  feeling  about  the 
throat,  more  at  times  than  others,  — not  painful ;  sometimes  a 
little  hoarseness,  with  frequent  inclination  to  swallow,  or  clear 
the  throat.  At  the  little  hollow  at  the  bottom  of  the  neck, 
just  above  the  top  of  the  breast-bone,  there  was  a  feeling  of 
pressure,  stricture,  or  enlargement, — no  pain,  but  an  un- 
pleasant sensation ;  sometimes  worse  than  at  others.  It  is 
absent  for  days  at  a  time,  and  then  lasts  for  several  hours  a 
day."  This  case  is  under  treatment. 

A  clergyman  has  a  hoarse,  cracked,  weak  voice,  easily 
tired  in  speaking ;  a  raw  sensation  in  the  throat,  and  in 
swallowing  has  "a  fish-bony  feeling  "  He  had  become  over- 
heated in  a  public  address,  and,  immediately  after  its  close, 
started  to  ride  across  a  prairie,  in  a  damp,  cold  wind,  in 
February.  Had  to  abandon  preaching  altogether,  and  be- 
come a  school-teacher.  This  gentleman  wrote  to  me  for 
advice,  and,  having  followed  it  closely  for  eighteen  days, 
reported  himself  as  almost  entirely  well. 

I  greatly  desire  it  to  be  remembered  here,  that  in  this,  as 
in  other  cases  of  throat-ail,  however  perfectly  a  person  may 
be  cured,  the  disease  will  return  as  often  as  exposure  to  the 
causes  of  it,  in  the  first  place,  is  permitted  to  occur.  No 
cure,  however  perfect,  will  allow  a  man  to  commit  with 
impunity  such  a  thoughtless  and  inexcusable  act  as  above 
named,  that  of  riding  across  a  prairie  in  February,  in  a  damp, 
cold  wind,  within  a  few  minutes  after  having  delivered  an 
excited  address  in  a  warm  room.  None  of  us  are  made  out 
of  India-rubber  or  iron,  but  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  a  reason- 
able soul,  subject  to  wise  and  benevolent  conditions  and 
restrictions ;  and  it  is  not  to  the  discredit  of  physic  or  physi- 
cians that,  being  once  cured,  the  disease  should  return  as 
often  as  the  indiscretion  that  originated  it  in  the  first  instance 
is  re-committed. 

Three  weeks  ago  one  of  our  merchants  came  to  me  with  a 
troublesome  tickling  in  the  throat.  At  first  it  was  only 


52  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

a  tickling;  but  for  some  weeks  the  tickling  compels  a  frequent 
clearing  of  the  throat;  and,  without  a  cough,  each  clearing, 
or  hemming,  brings  up  half  a  tea-spoonful  of  yellow  matter, 
with  some  saliva.  On  looking  into  his  throat,  the  whole  back 
part  of  it  was  red,  with  still  redder  splotches  here  and  there ; 
epiglottis  almost  scarlet..  On  inquiry,  I  found  he  had  for 
years  been  a  chcwer  of  tobacco  ;  then  began  to  smoke  ;  would, 
day  after  day,  smoke  after  each  meal,  but  especially  after 
tea  would  consume  half  a  dozen  cigars.  In  time,  the  other 
naturally  consequent  steps  would  have  been  taken, — con- 
sumption and  the  grave.  Among  other  things,  I  advised 
him  to  abandon  tobacco  absolutely,  and  at  once.  In  two 
weeks  he  came  again.  Throat  decidedly  better ;  in  every 
respect  better,  except  that  he,  in  his  own  opinion,  "had  taken 
a  little  cold,"  and  had  a  constant  slight  cough,  —  not,  by  any 
means,  a  trifling  symptom.  Let  the  reader  learn  a  valuable 
lesson  from  this  case.  This  gentleman  had  the  causes  of 
cough  before ;  he  found  that  smoking  modified  the  tLkling, 
and,  taking  this  as  an  indication  of  cure,  he  smoked  more 
vigorously,  and  thus  suppressed  the  cough,  while  the  cause 
of  it  was  still  burrowing  in  the  system,  and  widening  its 
ravages.  It  will  require  months  of  steady  effort  to  arrest  the 
progress  of  the  disease,  and  he  may  consider  himself  fortu- 
nate —  more  so  than  in  any  mercantile  speculation  he  ever 
made  —  if  he  gets  well  at  all.  If  he  does  get  well,  and  re- 
turns to  the  use  of  tobacco,  the  disease  will  as  certainly 
return  as  that  the  same  cause  originated  it ;  for  the  following 
reason  :  Throat-ail  is  inflammation  ;  that  is,  too  much  heat  in 
the  parts.  Tobacco-smoke,  being  warm,  or  even  hot,  is 
drawn  directly  back  against  the  parts  already  too  much 
heated,  and,  very  naturally,  increasing  the  heat,  aggravates 
the  disease.  Again:  any  kind  of  smoke — that  of  common 
wood  —  is  irritating,  much  more  that  of  such  a  powerful 
poison  as  tobacco,  —  soothing,  indeed,  in  its  first  transient 
effects,  like  many  other  poisons,  but  leaving  behind  it  conse- 
quences more  remote,  but  more  destructive  and  enduring. 

A  gentleman,  just  married,  with  a  salary  for  his  services 
as  secretary  to  a  Southern  house,  applied  to  me  to  be  cured 
of  a  sore  throat.  He  was  permanently  hoarse ;  swallowing 
food  was  often  unendurably  painful,  besides  causing  violent 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  53 

paroxysms  of  cough.  He  said  he  knew  no  cause  for  his 
complaint,  except  that  he  had  smoked  very  freely.  On  in- 
quiry, 1  found  that,  for  the  last  two  years,  he  had  used,  on 
an  average,  about  w  a  dozen  cigars  every  day,  —  perhaps 
more."  He  died  in  six  weeks. 

A  gentleman  from  a  distant  State  wrote  to  me,  some  months 
ago,  for  advice  as  to  a  throat  affection.  He  is  a  lawyer  of 
note  already,  and  of  still  higher  promise,  not  yet  having 
reached  the  prime  of  life.  By  earnest  efforts  as  a  temperance 
advocate,  in  addition  to  being  a  popular  pleader  at  the  bar, 
his  voice  became  impaired  with  cough,  spitting  of  blood, 
matter  expectoration,  diarrhoea,  debility,  and  general  wasting. 
He  was  induced  to  drink  brandy  with  iron ;  but  soon  left  off 
the  iron,  and  took  the  brandy  pure.  The  habit  grew  upon 
him.  He  sometimes  stimulated  to  excess,  according  to  his 
own  acknowledgment.  His  friends  thought  there  was  no 
interval,  and  gave  him  up  as  a  lost  man  to  themselves,  his 
family,  and  his  country ;  but,  in  time,  the  virulence  of  the 
disease  rose  above  the  stimulus  of  the  brandy,  and,  in  occa- 
sional desperation,  he  resorted  to  opium.  He  subsequently 
visited  the  water-cure ;  gained  in  flesh  and  strength,  and 
was  hopeful  of  a  speedy  restoration  ;  but  he  took  "  an  occa- 
sional cigar,"  —  the  dryness  in  the  throat,  hoarseness,  pain 
or  pressure,  and  soreness  still  remained  !  He  left  the  water- 
cure,  and  in  a  few  months  wrote  to  me,  having,  in  addition 
to  the  above  throat  symptoms,  a  recent  hemorrhage,  consti- 
pation, pains  in  the  breast,  nervousness,  debility,  variable 
appetite,  and  daily  cough.  Within  two  months  he  has  be- 
come an  almost  entirely  new  man,  requiring  no  further 
advice. 

Further  illustrations  of  the  manner  in  which  persons  get 
throat-ail  may  be  more  conveniently  given  in  the  letters  of 
some  who  have  applied  to  me,  with  the  additional  advantage 
of  having  the  symptoms  described  in  language  not  profes- 
sional, consequently  more  generally  understood. 

A  Presbyterian  clergyman  :  "  I  have  had,  for  three 
years  past,  a  troublesome  affection  of  the  thorax,  wyliich  mani- 
fests itself  by  frequent  and  prolonged  hemming,  or  clearing 
the  throat,  and  swelling,  —  both  more  frequent  in  damp 
weather,  or  after  slight  cold.  General  health  very  feeble, 


54  BRONCHITIS,   AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

sleeplessness,  waste  of  flesh,  low  spirits.  Visited  a  water- 
cure,  remained  two  months ;  but  my  hemming  and  swallow- 
ing were  not  a  whit  improved.  Touching  with  the  nitrate  of 
silver,  slightly,  makes  the  larynx  sore.  I  have  been  always 
able  to  preach.  It  has  never  affected  my  voice  until  very 
recently.  Two  weeks  ago  I  preached  two  long  sermons,  in  a 
loud  and  excited  voice,  in  one  day.  During  the  last  discourse, 
my  voice  became  hoarse,  and  my  hemming  has  become  very 
bad ;  and  there  has  been  a  slight  break  in  my  voice  ever  since. 
Hem,  hem,  hem,  is  the  order  of  the  day ;  clearing  the  throat 
is  incessant,  swallowing  often;  and  a  slight  soreness  of  the 
larynx,  particularly  after  a  slight  cold,  or  after  several  days' 
use  of  nitrate  of  silver,  with  a  scarce  perceptible  break  in  the 
voice.  These  are  my  principal  symptoms." 

This  case  is  under  treatment. 

A  lawyer  :  "Aged  thirty-seven.  Have  been  liable,  for 
several  years  past,  in  the  fall,  winter,  and  spring,  to  se- 
vere attacks  of  fever,  accompanied  with  great  debility,  loss 
of  flesh,  appearing,  to  myself  and  friends,  to  be  in  the  last 
stages  of  consumption ;  in  fact,  the  dread  of  it  has  been  an 
incubus  on  me,  paralyzing  my  energies,  and  weighing  dowii 
my  spirits.  In  the  summers,  too,  I  have  been  subject  to 
attacks  of  bilious  fever  and  bilious  colic.  A  year  ago  I  at- 
tended court  soon  after  one  of  these  attacks,  and  exerted 
myself  a  great  deal.  My  throat  became  very  sore,  and  I 
had  hemorrhage,  —  two  tea-spoons  of  blood  and  matter.  My 
health  continued  feeble.  I  went  last  summer  to  a  water-cure, 
and  regained  my  flesh  and  strength ;  but  the  weakness  in  my 
throat,  and  occasional  hoarseness,  continued  all  the  time. 
Afterwards,  by  cold  and  exposure,  I  became  worse ;  con- 
tinued to  have  chills,  and  fever,  and  night-sweats,  accom- 
panied by  violent  cough  and  soreness  of  the  throat.  I  got 
worse :  was  reduced  to  a  perfect  skeleton,  and  had  another 
hemorrhage.  Mucus  would  collect  in  the  top  of  the  throat, 
and  was  expectorated  freely.  I  am  still  liable  to  colds.  The 
seat  of  the  disease  seems  to  be  at  the  little  hollow  in  front,  at 
the  bottom  of  the  neck,  just  above  the  top  of  the  breast-bone. 
At  my  last  bleeding,  the  pain  seemed  to  be  in  the  region 
of  "Adam's  apple."  The  principal  present  symptoms  are, 
soreness  in  throat,  dryness,  pain  on  pressing  it,  and  hoarse- 


BRONCHITIS,   AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  55 

ness ;  pulse  from  eighty  to  ninety  in  a  minute,  irregular 
appetite.  These  symptoms,  together  with  my  fear  of  con- 
sumption, serve  to  keep  me  unhappy.  I  find  myself  con- 
stantly liable  to  attacks  of  cold,  sneezing,,  running  at  the 
nose,  even  in  the  summer  time.  My  mother  and  sister  have 
died  of  consumption,  as  also  two  of  my  -mother's  sisters. 
Feet  always  cold ;  daily  cough." 

There  is  no  consumptive  disease  ;  it  is  impossible.  No 
personal  examination  is  needed  to  tell  that.  The  foundation 
of  all  your  ailments  is  a  torpid  liver  and  a  weak  stomach.  If 
you  are  not  cured,  it  will  be  your  own  fault. 

The  treatment  of  this  case  was  conducted  by  correspond- 
ence, as  he  lived  six  hundred  miles  away,  and  therefore  I  had 
not  the  opportunity  of  a  personal  examination.  Within  a 
month,  he  writes:  —  "I  am  gradually  improving;  feet  warm, 
all  pain  has  disappeared  from  the  breast,  appetite  strong, 
regular,  and  good ;  pulse  seventy-two,  breathing  eighteen  ; 
all  cough  has  disappeared."  At  the  end  of  two  and  a  half 
months  no  further  advice  was  needed,  as  he  wrote  : — "I  have 
not  written  to  you  for  a  month,  being  absent  on  the  circuit. 
I  have  not  enjoyed  better  health  for -years  than  I  have  for  the 
month.  Weight  increasing,  no  uneasiness  or  pain  about  my 
breast ;  pulse  seventy-five,  less  in  the  morning.  The  only 
trouble  I  have  is  costiveness,  from  being  so  confined  in  court, 
and  being  away  from  home,  deprived  of  my  regular  diet. 
We  were  two  w7eeks  holding  court,  last  of  November,  in  a 
miserable  room,  the  court-house  having  recently  been  burned  : 
kept  over-heated  all  the  time.  I  made  four  or  five  speeches, 
and  suffered  no  inconvenience  whatever.  I  have  no  cough." 

A  clergyman  called  over  two  months  ago,  having  had,  at 
first,  an  ailment  at  the  top  of  the  throat,  apparently  above,  or 
near,  the  palate.  It  soon  descended  to  the  region  of  "Adam's 
apple,"  and,  within  a  month,  it  seemed  to  have  located  itself 
lower  down  the  neck,  giving  a  feeling  as  if  there  were  an 
ulcer  there,  with  a  sense  of  fulness  about  the  throat ;  hoarse 
after  public  speaking,  lasting  a  day  or  two ;  with  attacks, 
every  few  weeks,  of  distressing  sick  headache.  As  the  dis- 
ease seemed  to  be  rapidly  descending  towards  the  lungs,  a 
rigid,  energetic  treatment  was  proposed  ;  and  at  the  end  of 
ten  weeks,  he  writes:  —  "I  take  pleasure  in  introducing  my 


56  BRONCHITIS,   AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

friend, ,  to  you.  He  has  suffered  many  things,  from 

many  advisers,  with  small  benefit.  I  have  desired  him  to 
consult  with  you,  hoping  that  he  may  have  the  same  occasion 
to  be  grateful  for  the  providence  which  leads  him  to  you, 
which  I  feel  that  I  myself  have  for  that  which  guided  me  to 
your  counsels.  I  suffer  but  little,  very  little  from  my  throat, 
and  confidently  anticipate  entire  relief  at  no  distant  day,  for 
all  which  I  feel  myself  under  great  obligation  both  to  your 
skill  and  to  your  kindness,"  &c. 

Sick  headache  is  a  distressing  malady,  as  those  who  are 
subject  to  it  know  full  well,  by  sad  experience.  In  this  case, 
this  troublesome  affection  had  to  be  permanently  removed 
before  the  throat  ailment  could  be  properly  treated ;  when 
that  was  done,  the  throat  itself  was,  comparatively,  of  easy 
management. 

A  merchant,  wrote  to  me  from  the  South,  complaining 
chiefly  of  bad  cough,  sometimes  giving  a  croupy  sound ; 
throat  has  a  raw,  choking,  dry,  rasping  feeling ;  soon  as  he 
goes  to  sleep,  there  is  a  noise  or  motion,  as  if  he  were  going 
to  cough ;  startled  in  sleep,  by  mouth  filling  with  phlegm ; 
expectoration  tough,  white,  and  sticky ;  darkish  particles 
sometimes  ;  flashes,  or  flushes  pass  over  him  sometimes  ;  sick 
stomach  sometimes,  acid  often,  wind  on  stomach  oppresses 
him  greatly ;  a  lumpy  feeling  in  the  throat ;  on  entering  his 
house,  sometimes  falls  asleep  in  his  chair,  almost  instantly ; 
in  walking  home,  at  sundown,  half  a  mile  from  his  store,  is 
completely  exhausted ;  slightest  thing  brings  on  a  cough  ; 
never  eats  without  coughing ;  if  he  swallows  honey,  it  stings 
the  throat ;  got  a  cold  a  month  ago,  which  left  the  palate  and 
throat  very  much  inflamed  ;  throat  and  tongue  both  sore ;  a 
whooping,  suflbcative  cough  ;  can  hear  the  phlegm  rattle  just 
before  the  cough  begins  ;  a  dry,  rough  feeling,  from  the  little 
hollow  at  the  bottom  of  the  neck,  up  to  the  top  of  the  throat. 
One  night,  after  going  to  bed,  began  to  cough,  choke,  sutFo- 
cate  ;  could  not  get  breath,  jumped  out  of  bed,  ran  across  the 
room,  struggled,  and  at  length  got  breath,  but  was  perfectly 
exhausted ;  could  not  speak  for  half  an  hour,  without  great 
difficulty. 

In  addition  to  his  own  description  of  the  case,  his  wife 
writes  :  "Ten  o'clock  at  night.  —  I  am  no  physician,  nor  phy- 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  57 

sieian's  wife,  but  am  his  wife  and  nurse,  and  an  anxious 
observer  of  his  symptoms,  and  can  see  his  throat  inflamed 
behind  the  uvula.  He  says  there  is  a  lump  somewhere,  but  he 
cannot  tell  where.  Sometimes  he  thinks  it  is  in  the  little 
hollow  at  the  bottom  of  the  neck,  sometimes  just  above,  and 
sometimes  in,  or  about,  the  swallow.  A  recent  cold  has  aggra- 
vated his  symptoms.  His  cough  to-day  has  been  very  fre- 
quent and  loose.  He  has  emaciated  rapidly  within  a  month, 
and  is  now  a  good  deal  despondent.  As  for  myself,  I  feel  as 
one  who  sees  some  fair  prospect  suddenly  fading  away.  I 
had  fondly  hoped  —  oh!  how  ardently  !  —  that  he  might  be 
restored.  If  a  knowledge  of  the  fact  would  give  any  addi- 
tional interest  to  the  case,  I  will  only  say,  he  is  one  of  the 
loveliest  characters  on  earth.  None  in  this  community  has  a 
larger  share  of  the  respect  and  confidence  of  their  acquain- 
tance." 

The  opinion  sent,  for  I  have  not  seen  this  case,  was  as  fol- 
lows :  "  The  whole  breathing  apparatus,  from  the  top  of  the 
windpipe  to  the  extremity  of  its  branches,  is  diseased ;  the 
lungs  themselves  are  not  at  all  affected  by  decay.  Your 
whole  constitution  is  diseased  ;  and  yet  there  is  good  ground 
for  hope  of  life  and  reasonable  health." 

In  three  months  this  patient  writes — "I  am  glad  to  inform 
you  that  I  think  I  am  still  improving  in  health  and  strength. 
My  bowels  are  sometimes  disordered  by  eating  melons  and 
fruits ;  but  I  felt  so  much  better  that  I  thought  I  might  in- 
dulge. Pulse  sixty-five  to  seventy ;  an  almost  ravenous  appe- 
tite." A  month  later  he  writes,  "My  health  and  strength 
are  still  improving ;  cough  not  very  troublesome  ;  increasing 
in  flesh,"  &c.  I  believe  this  gentleman  now  enjoys  good 
health. 

A  lady  teacher  of  vocal  music,  writes  :  "  There  is  a  pecu- 
liar sensation  in  my  throat  for  the  last  two  months.  When- 
ever I  attempt  to  swallow,  it  feels  as  if  something  were  in  the 
way;  a  swelling  under  the  jaws,  a  soreness  on  the  sides  of 
the  throat,  extending  to  the  ears,  and  occasionally  throbbing 
painfully.  I  have  a  dull  aching  at  the  top  of  my  collar-bone, 
and  an  unpleasant  sensation  of  weakness  and  heaviness  in  my 
chest ;  a  bad  taste  in  my  mouth  frequently.  Have  been  regu- 
lar, but  have  been  afflicted  for  a  few  years  past  with  sickness 


58  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

at  the  stomach  and  vomiting,  attended,  occasionally,  with  great 
pain  for  a  few  hours.  During  these  attacks,  the  complexion 
changes  to  a  livid  hue.  I  have  been  very  much  troubled  with 
dyspepsia.  On  recovering  from  the  attacks  above  mentioned, 
I  have  experienced  a  feeling  of  weakness  almost  insupporta- 
ble. Am  very  costive,  and  my  spirits  are  greatly  depressed. 
Within  a  day  or  two  I  have  taken  a  violent  cold,  which  has 
affected  me  with  sneezing,  running  from  the  eyes  and  nose, 
together  with  a  slight  hoarseness.  I  was  advised  to  apply 
caustic  to  the  throat,  and  croton  oil  to  my  neck,  chest,  and 
throat.  I  have  since  discontinued  these,  not  having  received 
any  permanent  benefit  from  them.  On  two  occasions,  from 
over  exertion  at  concerts  arid  examinations,  I  was  unable  to 
speak  a  loud  word,  from  hoarseness,  for  several  days.  I  am 
extremely  anxious  to  learn  your  opinion.  In  about  two 
months  my  public  concerts  take  place,  and  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  something  should  be  done  for  me." 

Yours  is  general,  constitutional  disease.  There  is  no  special 
cause  of  alarm.  A  weakened  stomach,  a  torpid  liver,  a  want 
of  sufficient  air  and  exercise,  are  the  foundations  of  all  your 
ailments,  and  by  the  proper  regulation  of  these,  you  may  ex- 
pect to  have  good  health  and  a  stronger  voice.  You  must 
have  energy  and  patient  perseverance  in  carrying  out  the  pre- 
scriptions sent  to  you. 

In  one  mouth  this  lady  writes,  and  the  letter  is  given  to 
encourage  others  who  may  come  under  my  care,  to  engage 
with  determination  and  energy  in  carrying  out  the  directions 
which  may  be  given  them.  The  reader  may  also  see  what  a 
great  good  a  little  medicine  may  do,  when  combined  with  the 
judicious  employment  of  rational  mc«ns,  which  do  not  in- 
volve the  taking  of  medicine,  or  the  use  of  painful  and  scari- 
fying agencies  and  patent  contrivances  :  — 

"I  began  your  prescriptions  at  once.  Having  followed 
them  for  some  time,  I  was  obliged  to  intermit  them  for  a  few 
days,  in  consequence  of  having  to  conduct  a  concert,  besides 
having  to  travel,  by  stage  and  railroad,  seventy  or  eighty  miles. 
During  this  time,  I  was  up  every  night  until  twelve  o'clock, 
and  was  much  exposed  to  the  night  air.  On  returning  home, 
I  recommenced  your  directions,  have  made  it  a  point  to 
attend  to  them  strictly,  and  have  very  seldom  failed  of  doing 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  59 

so.  In  consequence  of  two  omissions  in  diet,  I  suffered  from 
headache,  which  disappeared  when  I  observed  your  directions. 
My  appetite  is  good  ;  my  food  agrees  with  me.  I  sometimes 
feel  dull  and  sleepy  after  dinner.  I  drop  to  sleep  immcdiate- 
ly.  Seldom  wake  in  the  night.  Sleep  about  seven  hours  and 
generally  feel  bright  and  strong  in  the  morning,  when  I  take 
a  brisk  walk  of  two  miles  and  a  half:  the  same  after  six  r.  M. 
My  walks  at  first  fatigued  me  considerably ;  generally,  how- 
ever, I  have  felt  better  and  better,  from  their  commencement 
to  their  end,  and  have  perspired  very  freely.  The  exercise  I 
take  seems  rather  to  increase,  than  diminish,  my  strength.  I 
have  not  been  prevented  from  taking  exercise  from  any  damp- 
ness in  the  atmosphere.  I  have  sometimes  been  exposed  to 
the  night  air  in  going  to  church  and  other  places,  but  without 
any  perceptible  injury.  The  means  you  advise  produce  a 
general  glow,  and  invariably  remove  headache,  which  I  some- 
times have,  to  a  slight  degree,  after  dinner.  I  think  my 
throat  is  better.  There  is  no  unpleasant  feeling  about  it  at 
present,  except  the  difficulty  in  swallowing ;  and  even  that  is 
better.  Pulse  sixty-seven." 

I  had  for  some  time  ceased  to  reg.ird  this  energetic  young 
lady  as  a  patient,  when  she  announces  a  new  ailment,  a  diffi- 
culty at  periodic  times :  "  I  walked  two  miles  every  day, 
and  everything  was  going  on  well,  until  one  evening,  after 
walking  very  fast,  I  sat  awhile  W7ith  a  friend,  in  a  room  with- 
out fire,  in  November.  The  weather  was  chilly  and  damp  ;  I 
was  unwell,  suppressed ;  had  a  chill  and  incessant  cough  for 
several  hours,  ending  in  something  like  inflammation  of  the 
lungs." 

These  things  were  remedied,  and  she  is  now  engaged  in 
the  active  discharge  of  her  duties.  This  last  incident  is  intro- 
duced here  to  warn  every  reader,  especially  women,  against 
all  such  exposures  at  all  times,  most  especially,  during  par- 
ticular seasons.  Such  exposures  as  sitting  in  rooms  without 
fire,  in  the  fall  and  spring,  after  active  walking,  have  thrown 
stout,  strong  men  into  a  fatal  consumption  ;  and  it  is  not  at  all 
to  be  wondered  at  that  delicate  women  should  lay  the  founda- 
tion of  incurable  disease  in  the  same  manner.  I  will  feel  well 
repaid  for  wTriting  these  lines,  if  but,  here  and  there,  a  reader 
may  be  found  to  guard  against  such  exposures.  Our  parlors 


CO  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

and  drawing-rooms  are  kept  closed  to  the  air  and  light  for  a 
great  portion  of  the  twenty-four  hours,  and,  unless  the  weath- 
er is  quite  cool,  there  is  no  fire  in  them.  Thus  they  necessa- 
rily acquire  a  cold,  clammy  dampness,  very  perceptible  on 
first  entering.  A  fire  is  not  thought  necessary,  as  visitors 
usually  remain  but  a  few  minutes ;  but  when  the  blood  is 
warmed  by  walking  in  the  pure  air  and  the  clear  sunshine,  it 
is  chilled  in  a  very  short  space  of  time,  if  the  person  is  at  rest 
in  the  cold  and  gloom  of  a  modern  parlor,  especially  as  a  con- 
templated call  of  a  minute  is  often  unconsciously  extended  to 
half  an  hour,  under  the  excitement  of  friendly  greetings  and 
neighborly  gossip.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  thousands, 
every  year,  catch  their  death  of  cold  —  to  use  a  homely  but 
expressive  phrase  —  in  the  manner  above  named.  Young 
women  especially  cannot  act  thus  with  impunity.  Men  per- 
ish by  multitudes,  every  year,  by  exposures  of  a  similar  char- 
acter,—  walking  or  working  until  they  become  warm,  then 
sitting  in  a  hall  or  entry,  or  a  cold  counting-room ;  or  stand- 
ing still  at  the  wharf  or  a  street  corner ;  or  running  to  reach 
a  ferry-boat  until  they  begin  to  perspire,  and  then  sitting  still 
in  the  wind  while  the  boat  is  crossing.  It  is  by  inattention  to 
what  may  be  considered  such  trifling  little  things,  that  thou- 
sands of  valuable  lives  are  sacrificed  every  year. 

A  young  gentleman  from  Washington  city  complained  of 
uneasiness  at  throat,  caused  by  repeated  colds,  late  hours,  hot 
rooms  ;  cough  most  of  mornings  —  dry,  tickling,  hollow  ;  ex- 
pectoration a  little  yellow ;  bloody,  streaked  expectoration 
six  months  ago  ;  breathing  oppressed  if  sit  or  stoop  long ; 
take  cold  easy  in  every  way ;  throat  has  various  feelings, 
tickling,  heavy  aching,  raw,  dry,  from  palate  to  depression ; 
swallowing  a  little  difficult  at  times  ;  voice  not  much  affected  ; 
headache,  costive  bowels,  piles  occasionally,  pain  about  shoul- 
der-blades and  at  their  points,  soreness  under  both  ribs  some- 
times, pains  in  the  breast  —  more  of  a  soreness  from  the  top 
of  the  breastbone  to  the  pit  of  the  stomach  ;  have  been  ailing 
fifteen  months.  Father,  mother,  sister,  uncle,  aunt  died  of 
consumption. 

You  cannot  have  consumption  now :  you  are  decidedly 
threatened  with  it.  With  proper  attention,  persevering  and 
prompt,  you  may  ward  it  off  effectually,  and  live  to  the  ordi- 


BRONCHITIS,   AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  61 

nary  term  of  human  life  to  those  of  your  occupation.  It  is 
my  opinion  that  without  this  care  you  will  fall  into  settled 
disease  within  a  year. 

In  two  months  this  gentleman  called  to  see  me  for  the  first 
time.  His  lungs  were  working  freely  and  fully,  over  the 
natural  standard ;  pulse  seventy-two,  appetite  good,  bowels 
regular.  I  did  not  think  he  required  any  particular  medical 
advice  ;  and  it  is  my  present  belief  that  with  proper  attention 
to  diet,  exercise,  and  regular  habits  of  life,  his  health  will 
become  permanently  good. 

A  gentleman  took  a  severe  cold  last  winter,  which  left  a 

o 

severe  cough.  Every  morning  the  breast  feels  sore  until  he 
stirs  about  some.  Pain  in  the  left  side,  running  through  to 
the  left  shoulder-blade,  and  between  the  shoulders ;  pain  in 
the  breast-bone,  and  in  the  centre  of  the  left  breast.  Chief 
complaint  is  pain  in  the  chest,  left  side,  and  a  constant  rising 
of  frothy,  thick,  tough,  and  yellow  matter,  with  frequent 
hawking,  hemming,  and  clearing  of  the  throat.  Age  22." 

Your  ailments  are  all  removable  by  diligent  attention  to 
the  directions  I  may  give  you.  I  very  much  hope  you  will 
spare  no  pains  in  carrying  them  out  most  thoroughly.  You 
certainly  have  not  consumptive  disease. 

He  called  upon  me  some  months  afterwards,  when  I  saw 
him  for  the  first  time.  He  had  nothing  to  complain  of;  pulse 
sixty,  his  lungs  working  freely  and  fully,  being  considerably 
above  the  natural  standard ;  and  as  far  as  I  know  he  continues 
well  to  this  day. 

A  gentleman  wrote  :  "  Am  officer  in  a  bank.  Was  at  a 
fire,  during  Christmas,  seven  months  ago.  Used  my  voice  a 
great  deal;  began  to  be  hoarse,  very  much  so  by  morning. 
This  lasted  a  week  and  went  off;  but  in  three  weeks  there 
appeared  to  be  something  about  the  palate  which  wanted  to 
come  away.  Throat  seemed  inflamed,  and  ever  since  then 
have  had  a  clogging  feeling  in  the  throat,  that  does  not  affect 
my  voice  unless  I  read  aloud,  when  I  soon  become  hoarse. 
Two  days  ago  I  spit  up  a  spoonful  of  dark  blood  ;  never  be- 
fore or  since.  I  have  a  binding  sensation  across  the  top  of 
the  breast,  and  three  months  since  had  a  pain  up  and  down 
the  breast-bone.  Have  used  iodide  of  potash ;  have  had  the 
throat  pencilled,  and  then  sponged  with  nitrate  of  silver, 
without  benefit.  Pulse,  one  hundred  and  ten." 


62  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

Yours  is  a  throat  ailment,  at  the  entrance  of  the  windpipe, 
not  as  low  down  as  the  voice  organs.  There  is  very  consid- 
erable active  inflammation  there.  Your  lungs  are  a  little 
weakened,  nothing  more ;  the  pains  in  the  breast  are  not 
serious  at  all,  and  I  see  no  obstacle  to  your  entire  recovery. 

I  received  letter  after  letter  from  this  young  gentleman, 
stating  that  no  perceptible  benefit  seemed  to  follow  what  I 
advised.  He  was  encouraged  to  persevere,  and  finally  his 
symptoms  began  to  change,  and  then  disappeared ;  and,  in 
two  months  from  his  first  consultation,  he  wrote  me  to  say  that 
he  had  steadily  improved ;  pulse  permanently  at  sixty-five ; 
expressing  his  obligations,  &c.  This  case  shows  strikingly 
the  advantage  of  perseverance. 

A  clergyman  wrote  to  me  for  advice  in  reference  to  a  throat 
complaint.  I  prescribed,  and  had  entirely  forgotten  the  cir- 
cumstance, when  the  following  letter  was  received  :  — 

w  I  began  to  follow  your  directions  on  the  fourth  day  of 
May,  not  quite  three  months  ago,  and  have  adhered  to  them 
strictly  ever  since.  I  am  evidently  a  great  deal  better.  I 
have  lost  no  flesh  :  although  it  is  summer,  my  weight  has  not 
varied  three  pounds  since  I  wrote  to  you ;  it  is  now  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-nine  pounds.  My  tonsils  are  diminished,  and 
give  me  no  uneasiness,  except  in  damp  weather.  From  my 
throat,  which  is  now  generally  perfectly  comfortable,  I  am 
continually  bringing  up  a  pearly  substance.  Sometimes  it  is 
perfectly  clear,  and  like  the  pure  white  of  an  egg.  But  this 
is  a  mighty  change.  At  first,  I  could  not  talk  five  minutes  in 
the  family  circle.  My  throat  was  constantly  tickling  and 
burning ;  so  that  a  mustard  plaster,  which  took  all  the  skin 
off  my  neck  in  front,  was  a  comfort ;  but  now  I  can  talk  as 
much  as  I  wish,  read  a  page  or  so  aloud,  and  am  almost 
tempted  to  sing  a  little." 

How  do  persons  get  bronchitis?  In  the  same  manner  as  a 
common  cold  ;  for  bronchitis  is  a  common  cold  protracted,  set- 
tling not  on  the  lungs,  but  on  the  branches  of  the  windpipe, 
clogging  them  up  with  a  secretion  thicker  than  is  natural ;  this 
adheres  to  the  inside  of  the  tube-like  branches,  and,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  closes  them  :  hence,  but  a  small  portion  of  air 
gets  into  the  lungs.  Nature  soon  begins  to  feel  the  deficiency, 
and  instinctively  makes  extra  efforts  to  obtain  the  necessary 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  63 

quantity,  in  causing  the  patient  to  draw  in  air  forcibly  instead 
of  doing  it  naturally  and  without  an  effort.  This  forcible 
inspiration  of  external  air  drives  before  it  the  accumulating 
phlegm,  and  wedges  it  more  compactly  in  a  constantly-dimin- 
ishing tube,  until  the  passage  is  entirely  plugged  up.  The 
patient  makes  greater  efforts  to  draw  in  the  air,  but  these 
plugs  of  mucus  arrest  it,  and  there  is  a  feeling  as  if  the  air 
did  not  get  down  to  its  proper  place,  or  as  if  it  were  stopped 
short,  causing  a  painful  stricture,  or  cord-like  sensation,  or, 
as  some  express  it,  a  stoppage  of  breath.  If  relief  is  not 
given  in  such  cases,  either  by  medicine,  judiciously  admin- 
istered, or  by  a  convulsive  effort  of  nature  at  a  cough,  which 
is  a  sudden  and  forcible  expulsion  of  such  air  as  happened  to 
be  on  the  other  side  of  the  plug,  the  patient  would  die  ;  and 
they  often  do  feel  as  if  they  could  not  possibly  live  an  hour. 
This  is,  more  particularly,  a  description  of  an  attack  of  Acute 
Bronchitis.  Chronic  Bronchitis  is  but  a  milder  form  of  the 
same  thing,  very  closely  allied  in  the  sensations  produced,  if 
not  indeed  in  the  very  nature  of  the  thing,  to  what  may  be 
considered  a  kind  of  perpetual  asthma,  which  may,  in  most 
cases,  be  removed  and  warded  off,  for  an  indefinite  time,  by 
the  use  of  very  little  medicine,  if  the  patient  could  be  induced 
to  have  a  reasonable  degree  of  self-denial  and  careful  perse- 
verance. 

How  do  Persons  get  Consumption?  —  As  they  do  most 
other  diseases,  by  inattention,  neglect,  imposition  on  nature. 
Many  persons  have  this  disease  hereditarily ;  but  the  same 
means  which  permanently  arrest  the  progress  of  accidental 
Consumption  will  as  often  and  as  uniformly  ward  off,  indefi- 
nitely, the  effects  and  symptoms  of  the  hereditary  form,  the 
essential  nature  of  accidental  and  hereditary  Consumption 
being  the  same.  The  treatment  is  also  the  same,  except  that 
in  the  accidental  form,  it  must  be  more  prompt,  more  ener- 
getic ;  in  the  hereditary  form  it  must  be  more  mild,  more 
persevering.  I  consider  the  latter  the  less  speedily  and  criti- 
cally dangerous  of  the  two. 


64  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 


MISCELLANEOUS   ITEMS. 

A  number  of  pages  will  be  devoted  to  the  illustration  of  a 
variety  of  topics  connected  with  the  general  subject;  all, 
however,  will  be  of  a  practical  character,  —  at  least,  such  is 
the  intention. 

Consumption  is  the  Oxidation  of  the  Exudation  Corpuscle. 
—  This  corpuscle,  —  this  little  body,  this  tubercle,  this  seed 
of  Consumption  —  is  an  albuminous  exudation,  and,  being 
deficient  in  fatty  matter,  its  elementary  molecules  cannot 
constitute  nuclei,  capable  of  cell  development ;  therefore, 
these  nuclei  remain  abortive,  are  foreign  bodies  in  the  lungs, 
and,  like  all  other  foreign  bodies  there,  cause  irritation,  tick- 
ling. This  tickling  is  a  cause  of  cough,  as  itching  is  a  cause 
of  scratching,  both  being  instinctive  efforts  of  nature  to 
remove  the  cause  of  the  difficulty.  The  oxidation — that  is, 
the  burning,  the  softening  of  this  corpuscle  of  tubercle  — 
gives  yellow  matter  as  a  product,  just  as  the  burning,  that 
is,  the  oxidation  of  wood,  gives  ashes  as  a  product.  Thus 
the  yellow  matter  expectorated  in  Consumption,  is  a  sign 
infallible,  that  a  destructive,  consuming  process  is  going  on 
in  the  lungs,  just  as  the  sight  of  ashes  is  an  infallible  sign 
that  wood,  or  some  other  solid  substance,  has  been  burned ; 
that  is,  destroyed. 

But  why  is  it  that  this  albuminous  exudation,  this  tubercle, 
this  exudation  corpuscle,  should  lack  this  fatty  matter,  this 
oil,  this  carbon,  which,  did  it  have,  would  make  it  a  healthy 
product,  instead  of  being  a  foreign  body  and  a  seed  of  death? 

Consumption  is  an  error  of  nutrition.  The  patient  has 
soliloquized  a  thousand  times,  "I  sleep  pretty  well,  bowels 
regular,  and  I  relish  my  food,  but  somehow  or  other  it  does 
not  seem  to  do  me  the  good  it  used  to.  I  do  not  get  strong." 
The  reason  of  this  is,  that  the  food  is  imperfectly  digested,  and 
when  that  is  the  case,  acidity  is  the  result,  which  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing feature  of  consumptive  disease.  This  excess  of 
acid  in  the  alimentary  canal  dissolves  the  albumen  of  the  food, 
and  carries  it  off  into  the  blood  in  its  dissolved  state,  making 
the  whole  mass  of  blood  imperfect,  impure,  thick,  sluggish, 
damming  up  in  the  lungs, — that  is,  congesting  them,- 


BRONCHITIS,   AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  65 

instead  of  flowing  out  to  the  surface,  and  keeping  the  skin 
of  a  soft  feel  and  a  healthful  warmth.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
skin  of  all  consumptives  has  either  a  dry.  hot  feel,  or  a  cold, 
clammy  dampness ;  at  one  time,  having  cold  chills  creeping 
over  them,  causing  them  to  shiver  in  the  sun  or  hover  over 
the  fire ;  at  another  time,  by  the  reaction,  burning  hot,  the 
cheek  a  glowing  red,  the  mouth  parched  with  thirst.  Another 
effort  of  the  excess  of  acidity  dissolving  the  albumen  and 
carrying  it  into  the  blood  is,  that  the  blood  is  deficient  in  the 
fat,  or  oil,  or  carbon,  which  would  have  been  made  by  the 
union  of  this  albumen  with  alkaline  secretions ;  the  blood 
then  wanting  the  fat  or  fuel,  which  is  necessary  to  keep  the 
body  warm,  that  which  was  already  in  the  body,  in  the  shape 
of  what  we  call  flesh,  is  used  instead,  and  the  man  wastes 
away,  just  as  when  steamboat  men,  when  out  of  wood,  split 
up  the  doors,  partitions,  and  other  parts  of  the  boat,  to  keep 
her  going,  she  moves  by  consuming  herself.  So  the  con- 
sumptive lives  on,  is  kept  warm  by  the  burning  up,  the  oxi- 
dation of  his  own  flesh  every  day  and  every  hour ;  this  same 
wasting  away  being  the  invariable,  the  inseparable  attendant 
of  every  case  of  true  Consumption.  He  lives  upon  himself 
until  there  is  no  more  fuel  to  burn,  no  more  fat  or  flesh,  and 
he  dies,  "nothing  but  skin  and  bone."  What,  then,  must  be 
done  to  cure  a  man  of  consumptive  disease  ? 

He  must  be  made  more,  what  is  called,  "  fleshy ; "  that  is, 
he  must  have  more  fuel,  fat,  to  keep  him  warm. 

The  acidity  of  the  alimentary  canal  must  be  removed,  in 
order  that  the  food  may  be  perfectly  digested,  so  as  to  make 
pure  blood,  such  as  will  flow  healthfully  and  actively  through 
every  part  of  the  system,'  and  become  congested,  sluggish, 
stagnant,  nowhere. 

To  remove  this  acidity,  the  stomach  must  be  made  strong, 
and  healthfully  active ;  but  no  more  than  healthfully  active, 
so  as  to  convert  the  food  into  a  substance  fit  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  pure  blood. 

To  make  the  stomach  thus  capable  of  forming  a  good  blood 
material  from  the  aliment  introduced  into  it,  as  a  perfect  mill 
converts  the  grain  into  good  flour  or  meal,  there  is  behind  the 
mill  a  power  to  turn  it,  there  is  behind  the  stomach  powers 
to  be  exerted.  Those  are  the  glandular  system,  the  liver 


66  BUONCniTIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

being  the  main  one  of  all.  This  must  be  kept  in  healthful, 
operating  order;  if  it  acts  too  much  or  too  little,  the  food  is 
badly  manufactured,  and  the  blood,  which  is  made  out  of  the 
food,  and  of  the  food  alone,  is  imperfect  and  impure. 

After  all  this  is  done,  there  is  one  more  operation,  which  is 
the  last  finishing  touch  by  which  pure  life-giving  blood  is 
made.  A  sufficient  amount  of  pure  air  must  come  in  contact 
with  it,  before  blood  is  constituted.  This  contact  takes  place 
in  the  lungs;  not  such  a  contact  as  the  actual  commingling 
of  wine  and  water ;  for  the  air,  and  what  is  soon  to  become 
blood,  are  not  mixed  together ;  they  are  kept  separate  in  dif- 
ferent vessels.  The  air  is  in  the  lungs,  that  is,  in  the  little 
bladders  or  cells ;  and  this  fluid,  which  is  to  be  converted  into 
blood,  is  in  the  little  veins  or  tubes,  which  are  spread  around 
over  the  sides  of  the  air-cells,  as  a  vine  is  spread  over  a  wall ; 
but  these  little  vessels  have  sides  so  very  thin,  that  the  life- 
giving  material  of  the  air  passes  through  into  the  blood,  just 
as  the  warmth  of  the  sun  passes  through  glass ;  but  while  this 
life-giving  quality  of  the  air  passes  into  the  blood,  making  it 
perfect,  tlie  impure  and  deathly  ingredients  of  the  blood  pass 
out  of  it,  into  the  air,  which  has  just  been  deprived  of  its  life. 
Thus  it  is,  that  while  the  air  we  draw  in  at  a  single  breath  is 
cool  and  pure,  and  full  of  life,  that  which  is  expired  is  so 
hurtful,  so  poisonous,  at  least  so  destitute  of  life,  that  were  it 
breathed  in,  instantly,  uucombined  with  other  air,  by  a  per- 
fectly healthy  person,  he  would  instantaneously  die.  So  that 
pure  air,  in  breathing,  is  most  essentially  indispensable  ;  first, 
to  impart  perfection,  life  to  the  blood ;  and  also  to  withdraw 
from  it  its  death.  No  wonder,  then,  that  a  plentiful  supply 
of  pure  air  is  so  essential  to  the' maintenance  of  health,  so 
doubly  essential  to  the  removal  of  disease  and  restoration  to 
a  natural  condition.  No  wonder,  then,  that  when  a  man's 
lungs  are  decaying,  and  thus  depriving  him  of  the  requisite 
amount  of  air,  he  so  certainly  fades  away,  unless  the  decay  is 
first  arrested,  and  the  lung  power,  or  capacity,  restored. 

The  great  principles,  then,  involved  in  the  cure  of  con- 
sumptive disease,  or,  professionally  speaking,  the  great  indi- 
cations, are  :  — 

To  cause  the  consumption  and  healthful  digestion  of  the 
amount  possible  of  substantial,  nutritious,  plain  food. 


BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES.  67 

To  cause  the  patient  to  consume  more  pure  air. 

To  bring  about  the  first  condition  requires  the  exercise  of 
extensive  medical  knowledge,  combined  with  a  wide  experi- 
ence and  close  and  constant  observation.  To  regulate  health- 
fully the  digestive  apparatus,  —  that  is,  to  keep  the  whole 
glandular  system  of  the  human  body  in  healthfully-working 
order,  —  requires  remedies  and  treatment  as  varied  in  their 
combinations,  almost,  as  the  varied  features  of  the  human  face. 
Scarcely  any  two  persons  in  a  hundred  are  to  be  treated  in 
the  same  way,  unless  you  can  find  them  of  the  same  size,  age, 
sex,  constitution,  temperament,  country,  climate,  occupation, 
habits  of  life,  and  manner  of  inducing  the  disease.  Here  are 
ten  characteristics  which  are  capable,  as  every  arithmetician 
knows,  of  a  thousand  different  combinations ;  so  that  any 
person  proposing  any  one  thing  as  a  remedy,  a  cure  for  Con- 
sumption, applicable  to  all  cases  and  stages,  must  be  ignorant 
or  infamous  beyond  expression. 

The  two  things  above  named  will  be  always  curative  in  pro- 
portion to  their  timely  accomplishment.  The  ways  of  bring- 
ing these  about  must  be  varied,  according  to  constitution, 
temperament,  and  condition.  The  mode  of  doing  the  thing 
is  not  the  essential,  but  the  thing  done.  Beyond  all  question, 
the  thing  can  be  done.  Consumption  can  be  cured,  and  is 
cured  in  various  ways.  The  scientific  practitioner  varies  his 
means  according  to  the  existing  state  of  the  case.  The  name 
of  the  disease  is  nothing  to  him  ;  he  attacks  the  symptoms  as 
they  are  at  the  time  of  prescribing ;  and  if  he  be.  an  experi- 
enced practitioner,  he  will  know  what  ought  to  be  done,  and 
how  it  should  be  attempted,  just  as  a  classical  scholar  knows 
the  meaning  of  a  classical  phrase  or  word,  the  first  time  he 
ever  sees  it,  as  perfectly  as  if  he  had  seen  it  a  thousand  times 
before.  And  without  setting  myself  up  as  an  instructor  to 
my  medical  brethren,  I  may  here  intimate  my  conviction, 
that  the  cure  of  consumption  would  be  a  matter  of  every  day 
occurrence,  if  they  would  simply  study  the  nature  of  the 
disease,  read  not  a  word  of  how  it  had  been  treated  by  others, 
but  observe  closely  every  case,  and  treat  its  symptoms  by 
general  principles,  as  old  as  the  hills,  and  follow  up  the  treat- 
ment perse  veringly, —  prescribe  for  the  symptoms,  and  let  the 
name  and  disease  go.  But  then  they  must  first  understand 


68  BRONCHITIS,  AND  KINDRED  DISEASES. 

perfectly  the  whole  pathology  of  the  disease, — its  whole 
nature.  That,  however,  requires  years  of  laborious  study 
and  patient  observation. 

The  above  things  being  true,  as  perhaps  none  will  deny, 
it  is  worse  than  idle  to  be  catching  up  ever}'  year  some  new 
medicine  for  the  cure  of  consumption.  The  readiness  with 
which  every  new  remedy  is  grasped  at,  shows,  beyond  all 
question,  that  the  predecessors  have  been  failures.  Scores  of 
cures  have  been  eagerly  experimented  upon  :  naphtha,  cod 
liver  oil,  phosphate  of  lime,  each  will  have  its  day,  and  each 
its  speedy  night,  simply  because  no  one  thing  can,  by  any 
possibility,  be  generally  applicable,  when  solely  relied  upon. 
The  physician  must  keep  his  eye  steadily  upon  the  thing  to 
be  done,  varying  the  means  infinitely,  according  to  the  case 
in  hand.  Therefore,  the  treatment  of  every  individual  case 
of  consumption  must  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  scientific 
and  experienced  physician,  in  time,  and  not  wait,  as  is  usually 
the  case,  until  every  balsam  and  syrup  ever  heard  of  has  been 
tasted,  tried,  and  experimented  upon,  leaving  the  practitioner 
nothing  to  work  upon  but  a  rotten,  ruined  hulk,  —  leaving 
scarcely  anything  to  do  but  to  write  out  a  certificate  of  burial, 
and  receive  as  compensation  all  the  discredit  of  the  death. 

The  intelligent  reader  will  perceive  that  I  have  spoken  of 
the  cure  of  consumption  as  a  matter  of  course.  From  the 
resolute  vigor  with  which  cod  liver  oil  has  been  prescribed, 
and  (believingly)  swallowed  within  a  very  few  years  past,  one 
would  suppose  that  almost  every  one  believed  that  the  cure 
of  consumption  was  a  common  every-day  affair.  A  few  years 
ago,  nobody  thought  so,  except,  perhaps,  here  and  there  a 
timid  believer  who  kept  his  credence  to  himself,  lest  he 
should  be  laughed  at.  But  the  public  got  hold  of  the  idea 
that  cod  liver  oil  was  a  remedy  for  the  cure  of  consumption, 
and  swallowed  thousands  of  barrels  of  what  was  said  to  be  it, 
before  they  thought  of  inquiring  for  the  facts  of  the  case.  I 
have  never  to  this  hour  heard,  or  read,  of  a  single  case  of  true 
consumption  ever  being  perfectly  and  permanently  arrested 
by  the  use,  alone,  of  cod  liver  oil.  No  case  that  I  have  seen 
reported  as  cured,  would  bear  a  legal  investigation.  There 
has  always  been  some  kind  of  reservation.  It  is  my  belief 
that  all  the  virtues  of  cod  liver  oil,  or  any  other  oil,  or  phos- 


THE  LITTLE  COUTESIES   OF  LIFE.  69 

phate  of  lime,  as  curative  of  consumption  of  the  lungs,  are 
contained  in  plain  meat  and  bread,  pure  air,  and  pure  water ; 
the  whole  of  the  difficulty  being  in  makiug  the  patient  com- 
petent to  consume  and  assimilate  enough  of  these.  Herein 
consists  the  skill  of  the  practitioner,  and  on  this  point  he 
needs  to  bring  to  bear  the  knowledge,  the  study,  the  investi- 
gation, the  observation,  the  experience  of  a  life-time  ;  and  he 
who  trusts  to  anything  short  of  this,  throws  his  life  away. 


THE  LITTLE  COURTESIES  OF  LIFE. 

In  walking  through  the  streets  of  Paris,  one  scarcely  fails 
to  be  struck  with  the  life,  light,  and  animation,  which  pre- 
vails everywhere,  and  seems  to  pervade  almost  everybody 
and  everything.  The  traveller  from  murky  London,  or  anx- 
ious New  York,  or  stiff,  calculating  Boston,  feels  himself  to 
be  in  a  new  atmosphere,  and  before  he  is  aware  he  is  hurried 
along  with  the  living  tide  of  the  Boulevards,  or  Champs  Ely- 
s^es,  a  polite  and  smiling  gentleman, —  his  own  countenance 
so  brightened  up  with  a  cheery  gladsomeness  and  sunshine, 
that  he  would  not  know  his  own  phiz  if  suddenly  confronted 
with  a  mirror.  Everywhere  there  are  birds,  and  songs,  and 
flowers,  and  smiles ;  at  every  turn  there  is  such  a  seeming 
unaffected  courtesy  and  polite  deference,  that  the  most  com- 
mon person  can  scarce  avoid  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
is  somebody,  and  he  retires  to  his  hotel  with  a  lighter  and 
more  satisfied  heart  than  he  has  had  for  many  a  long  day,  and 
places  his  head  upon  his  pillow,  well  pleased  with  all  the 
world.  The  author's  reminiscences  of  beautiful  Paris,  in  the 
palmy  days  of  Louis  Philippe,  are  all  of  flowers  and  sunshine. 
Being  a  child  of  the  sunny  south,  it  seemed  to  him,  when  he 
first  pitched  his  tent  in  Gotham  to  wander  no  more,  because 
of  family  ties,  that  every  man,  woman,  and  child  was  going 
to  a  funeral ;  glum  and  monosyllables  were  the  order  of  the 
day.  If,  sauntering  in  Union  Park,  he  took  a  seat  on  some 
vacant  bench,  the  very  next  comer  moved  on  the  last  two 
inches  of  the  utmost  extremity,  in  three  cases  out  of  four  giv- 


70  TEE  LITTLE  COURTESIES  OF  LIFE. 

ing  a  view  of  his  back ;  in  sixteen  seconds  more  he  would  be 
making  numberless  gyrations  with  his  cane,  or  boot  toe  on 
the  gravel  walk  ;  if  the  bench  happened  to  be  on  the  flagging, 
he  would  fix  his  eye  on  some  spot,  and  spit  at  it  by  the  quar- 
ter;  no  cheerful  flitting  ever  coming  across  that  sad,  reflect- 
ing face,  even  for  the  briefest  moment,  as  if  there  were  not  a 
thought  or  a  sympathy  for  any  human  being.  Why  not  give 
time  to  gold,  and  time  to  gladness,  too,  and  let  each  have  its 
season  :  be  serious,  if  you  please,  in  Wall  Street,  or  behind  the 
counter,  but  in  the  car,  or  omnibus,  or  park,  or  square,  or 
church,  or  promenade,  let  an  inner  joyousness  light  up  the 
countenance,  and  let  the  smile  of  recognition  of  your  brother 
man,  wake  up  new  life  whenever  the  eye  falls  upon  that 
brother's  countenance  ;  it  will  seldom  fail  to  light  up  a  kin- 
dred gladness  there,  self-perpetuating,  all  along  glorious  old 
Broadway,  from  Union  Square  to  the  Battery  ;  all  of  us  would 
live  the  longer  for  it,  and  what  is  more,  live  the  happier.  I 
move  that  no  vinegar  cruet  be  allowed  in  Broadway  until  moon- 
down.  What  right  has  any  man  to  come  up  to  me,  without 
cause  or  provocation,  when  I  am  gladsomely  strolling  down 
town,  with  little  Nell  and  Molly,  each  holding  on  to  a  fore- 
finger, to  turn  my  face  into  a  tamarind  ?  They  will  see  it  in 
a  moment,  and  their  little  hearts  will  beat  less  joyously,  until 
we  get  to  the  next  candy  shop.  These  are  little  things,  it  is 
true,  but  the  mass  of  human  enjoyment  or  sorrow,  is  made  up 
of  these  self-same  little  things.  A  writer  well  says  : — 

"  The  little  things  of  life  have  far  more  effect  upon  charac- 
ter, reputation,  friendship,  and  fortune,  than  the  heartless 
and  superficial  are  apt  to  imagine.  They  are  few,  indeed, 
however  rough  by  nature,  who  are  not  touched  and  softened 
by  kindness  and  courtesy.  A  civil  word,  a  friendly  remark, 
a  generous  compliment,  an  affable  bow  of  recognition,  all 
have  an  influence ;  while  surliness,  incivility,  harshness,  and 
ill-temper,  naturally  enough,  produce  an  effect  exactly  to  the 
reverse.  The  American  people,  as  a  whole,  are,  perhaps,  not 
remarkable  for  courtesy.  They  are  so  actively  engaged  in 
the  bustle  of  life,  in  onward  movements  of  commerce  and 
trade,  that  they  have  little  leisure  to  cultivate  and  practice 
those  polished  refinements,  which  are  the  results  of  education, 
of  travel,  and  of  enlarged  intercourse  with  society.  Never- 


RA GE  AND  RUIN.  71 

thelcss,  we  are  not  a  discourteous  people,  and  in  the  great 
cities,  the  proprieties  of  manner,  and  the  civilities  of  form, 
are  attended  to  with  a  commendable  degree  of  exactness. 

"  Still  we  are  bound  to  confess  that  we  are  deficient  in  many 
of  the  little  courtesies  of  life  —  courtesies  that  are  admirably 
calculated  to  sweeten  the  intercourse  of  society,  the  inter- 
course of  friendly  feeling,  and  the  general  communion  that 
takes  place,  from  day  to  day,  between  neighbors  and  com- 
panions. The  excuse  with  many  is,  that  they  have  not  time 
to  practise  the  civilities  to  which  we  refer  —  that  they  are  too 
much  engaged  in  more  important  matters.  Thus  a  friendly 
visit  will  not  be  repaid,  a  polite  note  will  be  left  unanswered, 
a  neighborly  call  will  be  disregarded,  a  pleasant  smile  will  be 
met  with  a  cold  look  of  indifference,  and  a  cordial  grasp  of 
the  hand  will  be  responded  to  with  reluctance,  if  not  surprise. 
All  this  may  seem  nothing,  and  yet  the  effect  upon  the  mind, 
and  the  heart,  is  chilling  and  painful." 


RAGE  AND  RUIN. 

SOME  one  has  said,  that  every  furious  burst  of  passion 
shortens  a  man's  life  a  year.  If  it  only  shortened  his  own 
life,  the  world  would  not  be  a  great  loser;  but,  unfortunately, 
passionate  people  keep  all  around  them  in  hot  water ;  their 
very  presence,  without  a  word  being  said,  generates  an  evil 
atmosphere,  causing  an  apprehensive  uneasiness,  which  anni- 
hilates every  gladsome  feeling.  "  Mother,"  said  a  little  child 
one  day,  "  if  I  am  a  good  little  girl,  will  I  go  to  heaven  when 
I  die?" 

"  Yes,  my  child  ;  and  all  good  people  go  there,  too." 

K  Mother,  will  grandfather  go  to  heaven  when  he  dies  ?  " 

"  Yes,  my  dear,  I  hope  he  will." 

"Well,  mother,  I  don't  want  to  go  to  heaven,  grandfather 
is  so  cross." 

The  author  confesses  to  a  combined  feeling,  a  half  and  half 
mixture  of  sadness  and  impatience,  whenever  he  loses  a 
w  case,"  although  it  is  said,  that  the  "  doctor's  bill  "  is  paid 
more  cheerfully  than  any  other,  when  divers  items,  "real, 


72  PAGE  AND  RUIN. 

personal,  and  mixed,"  thereby  change  owners.  But,  absorbed 
in  such  a  feeling  as  above  described,  it  is  rather  up  hill  work 
to  sustain  a  cheerful  countenance  at  the  evening  reunion  of 
wife,  and  children,  and  grandmother.  Tidy  as  the  tea  table 
may  be,  brightly  as  the  "Liverpool"  burns  in  the  grate,  joy- 
fully as  little  Bob  flaps  his  hands  and  arms,  as  if  they  were  a 
pair  of  wings,  the  moment  "father"  enters  the  door,  still  there 
is  the  incubus  of  the  "  lost  patient."  Sadness,  that  human  pow- 
er is  so  limited  ;  impatience,  that  physic  had  not  had  some  unus- 
ual efficacy  in  this  case,  because  there  is  always  something  to 
constitute  a  particular  reason  for  the  restoration  of  the  case  in 
hand  ;  the  only  sister  in  a  family  of  loving  brothers,  it  may 
be  ;  a  father,  on  whose  constant  labors  depends  the  support  of 
a  helpless  young  family ;  a  son,  the  hope  of  a  widowed 
mother,  her  only  stay  in  life ;  a  husband,  far  on  in  years, 
every  child  gone  long  before  him,  the  only  solace  of  her 
heart,  with  whom  he  had  lived  lovingly  from  the  day  they 
both  pledged  themselves  to  love,  and  "  none  other  "  for  life  ; 
yet,  old  as  he  is,  and  carefully  as  he  has  to  be  watched  over, 
she,  whose  attachment  scores  of  years  have  only  deepened 
and  purified,  she  too  feels  a  special  desire  that  he  might  be 
spared  to  travel  with  her  a  little  further,  towards  the  borders 
of  the  "promised  land ;"  else,  if  he  passes  away,  who  is  there 
in  the  Avild,  rude  world,  to  be  interested  in  her  welfare,  to 
look  to  her  interests,  to  sympathize  in  her  sorrows,  to  shed 
one  tear  at  her  grave  ? —  not  one  !  How  terrible  to  be  left 
alone,  old,  childish  !  When  that  hour  comes  to  me,  let  it  be 
my  last. 

But  the  memory  of  the  "  lost  patient " —  the  impress  it  leaves 
on  the  countenance,  even  amid  family  joys,  has  a  contaminat- 
ing effect,  and  little  Moll,  our  four  year  old,  a  perfect  Mi- 
mosa, whose  joyously  beaming  face  will  be  saddened  over  in 
a  second,  by  half  a  father's  frown,  sidles  up  to  mother,  and 
.hiding  her  face  in  her  lap,  most  earnestly  inquires,  "  Mother, 
does  thee  think  father  loves  us  any  ?  " 

The  author  must  close  with  the  statement  of  a  fact, 
which  illustrates  the  point  he  has  been  aiming  at,  the 
influence  it  has  on  the  health  and  happiness  of  all,  especially 
in  family  circles,  to  strive  after,  and  maintain  an  habitually 
cheerful  quietude  of  deportment,  at  home  and  abroad,  on  the 


KINDNESS    THE  BEST  PUNISHMENT.  73 

street,  by  the  wayside ;  thus  striving  resolutely,  bravely, 
against  whatever  odds,  of  a  naturally  hasty  temper ;  so  terri- 
ble an  experience  as  the  following  may  never  fall  to  the  lot  of 
the  reader :  — 

A  farmer  in  Wanapace,  Wisconsin,  sold  a  yoke  of  oxen  to 
an  individual  in  the  neighborhood,  and  received  his  pay  in 
paper  money.  The  man  who  purchased  the  oxen,  being  in  a 
hurry  to  start  off,  requested  the  farmer  to  assist  in  yoking 
them  up.  He  accordingly  went  to  the  yard  with  the  man  for 
that  purpose,  leaving  the  money  lying  on  the  table.  On  his 
return  to  the  house,  he  found  his  little  child  had  taken  the 
money  from  the  table,  and  was  in  the  act  of  kindling  the  fire 
with  it.  From  the  impulse  of  the  moment  he  hit  the  child  a 
slap  on  the  top  of  the  head,  so  hard  as  to  knock  it  over,  and 
in  the  fall  it  struck  its  head  against  the  stove  with  such  force 
as  to  break  its  skull. 

The  mother,  who  was  in  the  act  of  washing  a  small  child  in 
a  tub  of  water,  in  an  adjoining  room,  on  hearing  the  fracas, 
dropped  the  child  and  ran  to  the  room  whence  the  noise  pro- 
ceeded, and  was  so  much  terrified  at  what  she  there  beheld, 
that  she  forgot  the  little  child  in  the  tub  for  a  time,  and  upon 
her  return  to  the  room  found  the  little  one  drowned.  The 
husband,  after  a  few  moments  reviewing  the  scene  before  him, 
seeing  two  of  his  own  children  dead,  without  further  reflec- 
tion, took  down  his  gun  and  blew  out  his  own  brains. 


KINDNESS  THE  BEST  PUNISHMENT. 

A  QUAKER  of  most  exemplary  character,  having  been  dis- 
turbed one  night  by  footsteps  around  his  dwelling,  rose  from 
his  bed,  and  cautiously  opened  a  back  door  to  reconnoitre. 
Close  by  was  an  outhouse,  and  under  it  a  cellar,  near  a 
window  of  which  was  a  man  busily  engaged  in  receiving  the 
contents  of  his  pork  barrel  from  another  within  the  cellar. 
The  old  man  approached,  and  the  man  outside  fled.  He 
stepped  up  to  the  cellar  window  and  received  the  pieces  of 
pork  from  the  thief  within,  who,  after  a  little  while,  asked  his 
supposed  accomplice,  in  a  whisper,  "Shall  we  take  it  all?" 


74  KINDNESS   THE  BEST  PUNISHMENT. 

The  owner  of  the  pork  said,  softly,  "Yes,  take  it  all ;  "  and  the 
thief  industriously  handed  up  the  balance  through  the  window, 
and  then  came  up  himself.  Imagine  his  consternation,  when, 
instead  of  greeting  his  companion  in  crime,  he  was  confronted 
by  the  Quaker.  Both  were  astonished  ;  for  the  thief  proved 
to  be  a  near  neighbor,  of  whom  none  would  have  suspected 
such  conduct.  He  pleaded  for  mercy,  begged  him  not  to  ex- 
pose him,  spoke  of  the  necessities  of  poverty,  and  promised 
faithfully  never  to  steal  again.  "  If  thou  hadst  asked  me  for 
the  meat,"  said  the  old  man,  "  it  would  have  been  given  thee. 
I  pity  thy  poverty  and  thy  weakness,  and  esteem  thy  family. 
Thou  art  forgiven.''  The  thief  was  greatly  rejoiced,  and  was 
about  to  depart,  when  the  old  man  said,  "  Take  the  pork, 
neighbor."  "  No,  no,"  said  the  thief,  "  I  don't  want  the  pork." 
"Thy  necessity  was  so  great  that  it  led  thee  to  steal.  One 
half  of  the  pork  thou  must  take  with  thee."  The  thief  insisted 
that  he  could  never  eat  a  morsel  of  it.  The  thoughts  of  the 
crime  would  make  it  choke  him.  He  begged  the  privilege  of 
letting  it  alone.  But  the  old  man  was  inflexible,  and,  furnish- 
ing the  man  with  a  bag,  had  half  the  pork  put  therein,  and 
laying  it  upon  his  back,  sent  him  home  with  it.  He  met  his 
neighbor  daily  for  many  years  afterwards,  and  their  families 
visited  together,  but  the  matter  was  kept  secret ;  and  though 
in  after  years  the  circumstance  was  mentioned,  the  name  of 
the  delinquent  was  never  made  known.  The  punishment  was 
severe  and  effectual.  It  was  probably  his  first —  it  was,  cer- 
tainly, his  last  attempt  to  steal.  Had  the  man  been  arraigned 
before  a  court  of  justice,  and  imprisoned  for  the  petty  theft, 
how  different  might  have  been  the  result !  His  family  dis- 
graced, their  peace  destroyed,  the  man's  character  ruined,  and 
his  spirit  broken.  Revenge,  not  penitence,  would  have 
swayed  his  heart.  The  scorn  of  the  world  would  have 
blackened  his  future,  and  in  all  probability  he  would  have 
commenced  a  course  of  crime  at  which,  when  the  first  offence 
was  committed,  his  soul  would  have  shuddered.  And  what 
would  the  owner  of  the  pork  have  gained?  Absolutely  noth- 
ing. Kindness  was  the  best  punishment,  for  it  saved  while  it 
punished. 


ANNUAL  AILMENTS.  75 


ANNUAL  AILMENTS. 

SOME  persons  arc  sick  once  a  year.  In  some  cases,  the 
regularity  is  such,  that,  on  the  very  same  day  of  each  return- 
ing year,  their  "old  enemy"  makes  his  unwelcome  appear- 
ance. These  ailments  are  various  ;  with  some,  it  is  an  attack 
of  sick  headache ;  others  have  an  entire  loss  of  appetite ;  a 
third  person  has  some  kind  of  an  eruption.  Regular  annual 
returns  of  "  biliousness "  are  very  common ;  a  sore  leg,  a 
chronic  head-ache,  or  bleeding  from  the  nose  or  lungs,  afflict 
others.  One  man  has  a  yearly  "  sneezing  spell,"  another  a 
most  uncomfortable  watering  of  the  eyes  or  nose,  while  the 
great  mass  of  people  have  "the  spring  fever,"  which  was  a 
familiar  by- word  in  our  school-boy  days,  and  was  a  covert 
way  of  telling  one  that  he  was  lazy ;  for  while  there  was  no 
decided  sickness,  no  special  ailment,  yet  there  was  such  a 
vis  inertia,  such  a  power  of  doing  nothing,  that  an  epithet  of 
some  kind  was  needed.  On  the  approach  of  wTarm  weather, 
in  the  month  of  April,  and  more  decidedly  so  in  May,  we  are 
all  sensible  of  a  want  of  usual  vigor;  an  indefinable  languor 
pervades  the  whole  man,  mind  and  body :  when  we  sit  down, 
we  feel  like  staying  there.  It  is  really  an  effort  to  undertake 
anything ;  we  drag  ourselves  along  to  necessary  work ;  and 
as  for  getting  up  in  the  morning,  we  are  never  ready  to  do  it. 
We  wake  soon  enough,  especially  when  there  is  some  little 
yearling  to  crawl  over  and  manipulate  the  nose,  or  explore 
the  eye,  with  a  straight  finger  suddenly  converted  into  a 
hook,  and  then  drawn  out  with  infinite  glee;  no  gesture,  or 
growl,  or  impatient  turning  over,  frightens  away  the  little 
fisherman ;  in  fact,  he  rather  likes  it ;  it  is  real  fun  to  him. 
Then,  incontinently,  he  makes  a  grab  at  proboscis  with  his 
soft,  warm,  tiny  hand,  and  misses  it  just  enough  to  let  two 
or  three  sharp  finger-nails  "  make  their  mark  "  for  an  inch  or 
so  in  parallel  lines  ;  at  length  the  corner  of  one  unwilling  eye 
is  opened  with  the  express  purpose  of  seeing  in  what  direction 
you  must  send  your  frown,  when  you  find  two  of  the  sweetest 
little  peepers  playing  upon  you  so  confiding,  so  loving,  so 
twinkling  with  gleesomeness,  that,  pressing  the  tiny  tor- 


76  ANNOAL   AILMENTS. 

mentor  to  your  bosom,  you  smother  him  with  kisses,  and  are 
fairly  waked  up.  This  is  the  sweetest  alarm-clock  in  all 
nature,  and  the  most  effectual.  As  regular  as  the  dawn,  too, 
while  it  practises, — a  perseverance  worthy  of  a  better  cause, 
—  than  breaking  up  a  summer  morning's  nap.  Perhaps  the 
reader  may  remember  that  we  were  speaking  of  the  "  spring 
fever,"  that  universal  lassitude  which  makes  us  mere  automata 
at  the  departure  of  cold  weather.  But  this  is  not  the  only 
symptom.  The  appetite  begins  to  flag,  our  meals  come 
before  we  are  ready  for  them,  and  we  sit  down  to  them  un- 
willingly ;  if  we  enjoy  the  bliss  of  boarding,  we  begin  to  com- 
plain of  the  landlady,  or  lord,  as  the  case  may  be,  and 
grumble  threats  of  making  a  change  ;  that  the  table  is  not  as 
good  as  it  used  to  be,  and  the  old  saw  about  "  new  brooms," 
and  their  performances,  refreshes  our  memories ;  at  length, 
things  begin  to  take  a  serious  turn ;  our  clothing  does  not  fit, 
it  hangs  like  a  bag ;  and  to  quench  uncertainty  we  get  on  one 
of  Fairbanks'  best,  and  find  that  we  have  lost  in  two  months 
about  "  seven  per  cent,"  and  pronouncing  it  a  "  ruinous  rate," 
we  promptly  resolve,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  determination, 
too,  that  we  must  "do  something."  In  this  case,  the  first 
resolutions  are  the  best,  but,  as  we  think  it  over,  we  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  better  to  take  something,  and, 
as  the  calling  in  of  a  physician  endangers  our  largest  liberty, 
and  he  might  impose  restrictions  which  might  not  be  agree- 
able, we  resolve  upon  a  patent  medicine,  and,  if  not  sooner 
advised,  or,  if  having  no  choice  ourselves,  we  are  at  a  loss  to 
determine  what  is  best,  we  very  wisely  go  to  a  druggist  and 
ask  him  if  he  has  not  something  that  will  do  us  good ;  of 
course  he  has,  having  at  least  half  a  dollar  clear  interest  in 
every  bottle  he  sells ;  or,  it  may  be,  we  see  an  advertisement 
in  one  of  the  papers,  reading  like  the  following :  — 

"CERTIFICATE"  —  A  MODEL  OF  ITS  KIND. 

Dear  Doctor :  I  will  be  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  years 
old  next  October.  For  ninety  years  I  have  been  an  invalid, 
unable  to  move  except  when  stirred  with  a  lever ;  but  a  year 
ago  last  Thursday,  I  heard  of  the  Granicular  Syrup.  I 
bought  a  bottle,  suielt  of  the  cork,  and  found  myself  a  new 


ANNUAL  AILMENTS.  77 

man.     I  can  now  run  twelve  and  a  half  miles  an  hour,  and 
throw  nineteen  double  somersets  without  stopping. 

P.  S.  A  little  of  your  Alicumstoutum  Salve  applied  to  a 
wooden  leg,  reduced  a  compound  fracture  in  nineteen  minutes, 
and  is  now  covering  the  limb  with  a  fresh  cuticle  of  white 
gum  pine  bark. 

We  go  at  once  to  the  "Patent  Medicine  Depot,"  and  ask 
the  shopman  if  the  M  Granicular  "  and  "  Alicumstoutum  "  are 
really  good.  He  assures  us  that  according  to  his  best  interest 
and  belief,  they  have  cured  persons  "  a  great  deal  worse  off " 
than  we  are ;  so  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  we  purchase 
a  bottle  of  each,  and  take  a  dose  of  both  thrice  a  day,  on  the 
principle  that  if  one  medicine  cures  everything,  two  medicines 
will  cure  all,  and  more  too,  and  we  will  not  only  get  well  of 
our  present  ailments,  but  all  that  are  to  come.  Thus  it  is, 
the  patent  medicine  men  live  in  up-town  palaces,  have  their 
beautiful  villas  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  build  splendid 
stores  on  Broadway,  and  drive  in  unexceptionable  equipages ; 
and,  to  make  all  these  go  in  the  same  direction  as  their  physic, 
they  head  subscription  lists,  especially  the  published  ones, 
with  their  hundreds  and  their  thousands.  Meanwhile  we, 
their  victims,  go  down  to  our  graves,  unsuspecting  why  or  how. 

This  brings  us  to  our  second  reminder  of  "  spring  fever," 
or  rather  its  termination.  We  will  now  take  the  back  track, 
and  discourse  of  its  cause,  its  cure,  and  its  prevention. 
Reader,  it  will  save  you  many  a  sorrow,  many  a  dollar,  and, 
may  be,  many  a  day  of  glorious  life,  if  you  will  take  heed  to 
our  utterance. 

We  eat  about  one  third  more  in  winter  than  in  summer, 
because  we  not  only  have  to  repair  the  wear  and  waste  of  the 
system ,  but  we  eat  to  keep  the  body  warm ;  a  portion  of  the 
food  is  converted  into  fuel ;  we  must  keep  a  bodily  warmth 
of  ninety  or  a  hundred  degrees,  winter  and  summer ;  but  it  is 
easy  to  understand,  that,  as  the  thermometer  is  at  forty  in 
winter  and  eighty  in  summer,  less  fuel  is  required  to  sustain 
the  natural  temperature  in  warm  weather.  Yet,  if  in  defiance 
of  this,  we  pile  on  the  fuel,  a  wreck  and  ruin  is  as  inevitable 
as  the  blowing  up  of  a  steam  engine,  if  double  the  necessary 
quantity  of  steam  is  constantly  generated. 


78  ANNUAL  AILMENTS. 

For  a  while  after  the  opening  of  spring,  we  have  the  appe- 
tite of  winter,  and  not  using  our  knowledge,  we  indulge  it  as 
extensively  ;  and  thus  generating  more  heat  than  is  needed, 
we  soon  begin  to  think  "  we  are  feverish  ;  "  in  other  words, 
we  are  too  warm ;  but,  instead  of  making  less  fire,  we  begin 
.to  tear  down  the  walls  of  our  bodily  house  by  taking  off  our 
winter  clothing,  and  thus  add  another  cause  of  disease  and 
death.  In  a  short  time,  however,  nature  comes  to  our  aid, 
and,  to  save  us,  takes  away  our  appetite  ;  but  we,  taking  this 
as  an  evidence  of  declining  health,  decide  upon  one  of  two 
things  :  either  to  eat  without  an  appetite,  —  which  is  expres- 
sively denominated  as  "  forcing  it  down,"  —  or  we  decide 
upon  taking  a  tonic,  forgetting  that  nature  can  neither  be 
forced  nor  coaxed  with  impunity.  The  effect  of  eating  with- 
out an  appetite,  or  forcing  an  appetite  by  the  use  of  tonics,  is 
the  same ;  that  is,  the  introduction  of  more  food  into  the 
stomach  than  nature  requires,  than  there  are  juices  to  digest  it ; 
for,  although  you  may  take  a  tonic  which  whets  the  appetite, 
it  does  no  more ;  it  does  not  increase  the  amount  of  gastric 
juice,  for  nature  supplies  it  only  in  proportion  to  the  needs 
of  the  system  ;  and  if  she  gave  as  much  when  twenty  degrees 
of  heat  were  required  as  when  sixty  were  necessary,  she 
would  commit  a  great  blunder;  this  she  never  does,  when 
unmolested.  Then  we  have  more  food  in  the  stomach  than 
there  is  gastric  juice  for ;  more  wheat  than  there  are  mills 
to  grind  it ;  more  work  than  there  are  workmen  to  perform. 
But  nature  has  not  a  "  lazy  bone  in  her,"  but  goes  to  work  to 
do  the  best  she  can  ;  the  food  is  digested,  but  not  thoroughly  ; 
it  is  ground  up,  but  not  perfectly ;  the  work  is  done,  but  it  is 
badly  done ;  hence  an  imperfect  material  for  making  blood 
is  furnished ;  and  an  impure  blood,  an  imperfect  blood,  is 
inevitable.  Do  not  many  of  us  recollect  the  old-time  custom 
of  taking  "  sassafras  "  tea  in  spring,  or  some  other  favorite 
remedy,  with  the  expressed  intention  of  "  purifying  the  blood  ?  " 
It  is  a  habit  with  multitudes  to  use  some  kind  of  medicine  in 
the  spring  of  the  year,  and,  beyond  all  question,  with  present 
good  effect,  as  they  all  act  in  one  way  essentially,  and  that  is, 
to  remove  the  surplus  from  the  system.  It  all  amounts  to 
this :  we  eat  in  the  spring  more  than  we  can  dispose  of,  and 
then  take  medicine  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  all  for  the  transient 


ANNUAL  AILMENTS.  79 

pleasure  enjoyed  for  the  few  minutes  of  each  day  that  it  is 
passing  down  the  throat.  But  some  are  "principled,"  as  they 
terra  it,  against  taking  physic  ;  but  they  are  not  "  principled  " 
against  the  greater  harm  of  eating  against  the  appetite ;  for 
by  taking  the  physic  they  would  be  consuming  something 
which  might  destroy  others  ;  whereas,  by  eating  a  meal  with- 
out an  appetite,  they  consume  —  and  that  to  their  own  injury 
—  that  which  would  save  many  a  famishing  creature,  man 
or  beast,  from  starvation.  None  can  read,  without  disgust, 
of  a  Roman  ruler,  who  would  eat  to  his  full,  then  take  an 
emetic,  that  he  might  eat  again,  or  be  saved  from  the  effects 
of  a  gorge.  Even  this  person  acted  more  wisely  than  does 
he  who  eats  without  an  appetite,  and  allows  it  to  remain  in 
him  to  vitiate  the  blood  and  finally  destroy  the  body,  but,  in 
the  slow  process  of  destruction,  affording  time  to  transmit  to 
the  innocent  unborn,  a  vitiated  constitution,  to  afflict  and 
plague  for  untold  }rears  to  come.  If  the  man  could  but  die  in 
the  act,  as  it  were,  the  world  would  be  left  the  better,  for 
there  would  be  more  left  to  be  eaten  by  the  more  worthy, 
and  he  would  not  leave  his  slimy  trail  behind  him  in  the  per- 
son of  a  child.  If  he  is  said  to  be  a  real  benefactor  to  his 
race  who  makes  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  but  one  grew 
before,  what  ought  he  to  be  thought  of,  who  absolutely  de- 
stroys food  each  day  by  forcing  it  down,  which  it  would  take 
a  million  blades  of  grass  to  reproduce?  Reader,  do  you 
plead  guilty  to  having  eaten  without  an  appetite,  to  having 
"forced  it  down?"  Then  do  it  no  more,  for  it  is  a  sin 
against  yourself,  against  nature,  and  against  all  human  kind. 

We  ure  all  familiar  with  the  prevalence  of  bowel-complaints 
of  all  kinds,  in  the  spring  of  the  year,  and  of  their  fatal 
nature,  sometimes  spreading  from  house  to  house,  from  family 
to  family,  from  neighborhood  to  neighborhood,  like  some 
infectious  or  contagious  disease,  and  often,  but  most  errone- 
ously, attributed  to  the  use  of  fruits,  berries,  and  the  like ; 
the  cause  is  one  and  universal ;  —  it  is  over-eating,  with  its 
legitimate  results,  sour  stomach,  wind,  loose  bowels,  debility, 
diarrhoea,  dysentery,  and  death.  Thus  it  is,  that  the  more 
sudden  the  coming  on  of  spring  weather,  and  the  hotter 
it  is,  the  more  sickness  there  will  be;  while, .in  the  fall  of  the 
year,  as  the  weather  gets  colder,  and  however  suddenly, 


80  ANNUAL   AILMENTS. 

we  begin  at  once  to  gain  in  appetite,  in  vigor,  in  flesh  and 
health. 

The  remedy  for  spring  diseases,  by  whatever  name,  is  EAT 
LESS.  We  do  not  mean  that  you  shall  starve  yourself,  or 
that  you  shall  deny  yourself  whatever  you  like  best;  for  as  a 
general  rule,  what  you  like  best,  is  best  for  you ;  you  need 
not  abandon  the  use  of  tea,  or  coffee,  or  meat,  or  anything 
else  you  like,  but  simply  eat  less  of  them.  Eat  all  you  did 
in  winter,  if  you  like,  but  take  less  in  amount.  Do  not 
starve  yourself,  do  not  reduce  the  quantity  of  food  to  an 
amount  which  would  scarcely  "keep  a  chicken  alive,"  but 
make  a  beginning,  by  not  going  to  the  table  at  all,  unless  you 
feel  hungry  ;  for  if  you  once  get  there,  you  will  begin  to  taste 
this  and  that  and  the  other,  by  virtue  of  vinegar,  or  mustard, 
or  syrup,  or  cake,  or  "  something  nice ;  "  thus  a  fictitious 
appetite  is  waked  up,  and,  before  you  know  it,  you  have  eaten 
a  hearty  meal,  to  your  own  surprise,  and  perhaps  that,  or 
something  else,  of  those  at  table  with  you. 

The  second  step  towards  the  effectual  prevention  of  all 
spring  disease,  summer  complaints,  and  the  like,  is,  diminish 
the  amount  of  food  consumed  at  each  meal  by  one  fourth  of 
each  article,  and,  to  be  practical,  it  is  necessary  to  be  specific ; 
if  you  have  taken  two  cups  of  coffee,  or  tea,  at  a  meal,  take  a 
cup  and  a  half;  if  you  have  taken  two  biscuits,  or  slices  of 
bread,  take  one  and  a  half;  if  you  have  taken  two  spoonfuls 
of  rice,  or  hominy,  or  cracked  wheat,  or  grits,  or  farina,  take 
one  and  a  half;  if  you  have  taken  a  certain,  or  uncertain 
quantity  of  meat,  diminish  it  by  a  quarter,  and  keep  on 
diminishing  in  proportion  as  the  weather  becomes  warmer, 
until  you  arrive  at  the  points  of  safety  and  health,  and  they 
are  two :  — 

1.  Until  you  have  no  one  unpleasant  feeling  of  any  kind 
after  your  meals. 

2.  Until  you  have  not  eaten  so  much  at  one  meal,  but  that 
when  the  next  comes,  you  shall  feel  decidedly  hungry. 

If  these  suggestions  are  attended  to  in  any  community,  in 
any  spring,  the  physician  in  that  locality  will  "  book "  but 
twenty-five  cents  in  the  dollar.  Think,  for  a  moment,  how 
beautiful,  and  wise,  and  kind,  is  nature's  mode  of  procedure 
in  such  cases.  You  may  "  force  "  your  food  for  a  while,  but 


ANNUAL  AILMENTS.  81 

at  length  she  goads  you  on  until  you  loathe  its  very  smell  or 
sight,  or  even  mention.  And  when  some  mistaken  mother, 
or  sister,  or  aunt,  or  granny  prepares  you  "  something  nice," 
and  before  you  are  aware  of  it,  places  it  right  under  your 
nose,  with  the  assurance  that  you  must  take  something  to 
keep  up  your  strength,  you  can  only  smother  your  impa- 
tience, or  hold  in  your  imprecations  of  left-handed  blessings, 
at  the  expense  of  the  most  heroic  efforts.  For  days  and 
weeks  you  do  nothing  but  "sit  around  ;  "  you  eat  nothing,  you 
loaf  and  lounge  about,  more  dead  than  alive,  with  a  counte- 
nance nineteen  yards  long,  and  so  unfeignedly  solemn  to 
behold,  as  to  excite  the  commiseration  of  the  kind-hearted, 
or  the  cachination  of  the  healthy. 

Supplies  being  thus  effectually  cut  off,  that  is,  the  cause 
being  first  removed,  nature  next  proceeds  to  work  off  the 
surplus,  as  the  engineer  does  unwanted  steam ;  and  as  soon 
as  this  surplus  is  got  rid  of,  we  begin  to  improve ;  the  appe- 
tite, the  strength,  the  health  return  by  slow  and  safe  degrees, 
and  we  at  length  declare  we  are  "as  well  as  ever." 

Now,  if,  instead  of  eating  against  nature,  we  would  do  at 
once  what  nature  will  inevitably  compel  us  to  do,  sooner  or 
later,  that  is,  lessen  supplies,  at  the  very  first  and  faintest 
intimation  of  approaching  ill,  we  would,  if  under  the  counsel 
of  a  regular  physician,  not  lose  an  hour  from  our  daily  avo- 
cations, and  would  be  as  well  as  ever  at  the  end  of  a  week, 
instead  of  at  the  end  of  months,  and  save,  too,  all  the  months 
of  suffering,  and  making  them,  as  to  pleasure  or  business,  the 
blanks  of  our  existence. 

But  the  uninformed  and  the  poor  are  "not  able  to  lose 
time,"  they  must  work  for  their  daily  bread,  and  the  day  they 
cease  their  toil,  has  no  bread  for  wife  and  children  at  its 
close  ;  thus  it  is  that  many  an  honest  poor  man,  and  many  a 
widowed  mother,  strive  to  weather  it  out,  day  after  day, 
eating  without  an  appetite,  in  the  mistaken  notion  that  it 
keeps  up  their  strength,  until  the  system  becomes  so  impreg- 
nated with  disease,  that  at  last  they  reluctantly  "give  up;" 
they  find  "it's  no  use ;  "  take  to  their  bed,  and  but  too  often, 
not  until  all  the  restorative  energies  of  nature  are  gone,  and 
never  leave,  until  they  make  it  in  the  grave.  It  is  this 
vain,  this  unwise  struggle  against  nature,  this  doing  more 


82  THE  HOURS  MOST  FATAL   TO  LIFE. 

than  they  are  able,  which  places  many  an  industrious  wife  and 
mother  in  an  early  grave ;  the  almost  universal  excuse  is, 
they  "  can't  help  it,"  there  is  "  so  much  to  be  done."  But  if 
they  die,  isn't  it  helped  then?  with  your  children  left  to  grow 
up  in  neglect,  or  to  be  brutalized  over  by  some  unprincipled, 
or -selfish,  or  unfeeling,  or  artful  successor?  Mother,  look  on 
your  little  ones,  and  think  of  this  the  next  time  you  commit 
the  sin  of  doing  more  than  you  are  really  able,  against  the 
remonstrance  of  your  husband,  your  mother,  your  physician, 
and  your  own  judgment. 

According  to  my  observation,  there  is  not  much  danger  of 
a  man's  overdoing  himself.  The  first  thing  the  lord  of  cre- 
ation does  when  he  gets  "  out  of  kelter,"  is  to  go  to  his  wife 
to  be  "  fussed  over."  A  half-and-half  sick  man  is  the  veriest 
"conanny  "  in  existence.  Reader,  do  you  know  what  that  is? 
It  is  the  synonym  of  "  poor  shoat,"  in  the  west ;  perhaps  a 
clearer  idea  maybe  given  by  the  word  "calf."  A  half-and- 
half  sick  man  is  a  calf,  for  he  makes  a  great  ado  about  noth- 
ing; he  wrhines,  and  complains,  and  grumbles,  and  makes  you 
think  he  is  very  sick,  and  for  a  long  time  he  refuses  to  take 
anything;  at  length,  by  dint  of  persuasion,  he  agrees  to  take 
what  you  propose ;  and  when  you  bring  it  to  him,  he  is  out 
of  the  notion,  and  says  he  can't,  and  thus  he  lounges  about 
the  house  for  days  together ;  whereas  his  wife,  if  nothing  more 
had  been  the  matter  with  her,  would  have  worked  it  olf,  and 
said  nothing  about  it. 


THE   HOURS    MOST    FATAL    TO    LIFE. 

THE  hours  of  death,  in  two  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
eighty  instances,  of  all  ages,  have  been  ascertained.  The 
population  from  which  the  data  are  derived  is  a  mixed  popu- 
lation, in  every  respect,  and  the  deaths  occurred  during  a 
period  of  several  years.  If  the  deaths  of  two  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  eighty  persons  had  occurred  indifferently,  at  any 
hour  during  the  twenty-four  years,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
would  have  occurred  at  each  hour.  But  this  was  by  no  means 
the  case.  There  were  two  hours  in  which  the  proportion  was 


THE  HOURS  MOST  FATAL   TO  LIFE.  83 

remarkably  below  this,  namely,  from  midnight  to  one  o'clock, 
when  the  deaths  were  eighty-three  per  cent,  below  the  aver- 
age ;  and  from  noon  till  one  o'clock,  when  they  were  twen- 
ty and  three-fourths  per  cent,  below.  From  three  to  six 
o'clock,  A.  M.,  inclusive,  and  from  three  to  seven  o'clock, 
P.  M.,  there  is  a  gradual  increase,  —  in  the  former  of  twenty- 
three  and  one-half  per  cent,  above  the  average,  in  the  latter 
of  five  and  one-half  per  cent.  The  maximum  of  death  is  from 
five  till  six  o'clock,  A.  M.,  when  it  is  forty  per  cent,  above 
the  average  ;  the  next,  during  the  hour  before  midnight,  when 
it  is  twenty-five  per  cent,  in  excess  ;  a  third  hour  of  excess  is 
that  from  nine  till  ten  o'clock,  in  the  morning,  being  seven- 
teen and  one-half  per  cent,  above.  From  ten,  A.  M.  to 
three,  P.  M.,  the  deaths  are  less  numerous,  being  sixteen 
and  one-half  per  cent,  below  the  average,  the  hour  before 
noon  being  the  most  fatal.  From  three  o'clock,  P.  M.,  to 
seven,  P.  M.,  the  deaths  rise  to  five  and  one-half  per  tfent. 
above  the  average,  and  then  fall,  from  that  hour,  to  eleven, 
P.  M.,  averaging  six  and  one-half  per  cent,  below  the  mean. 
During  the  hours  from  nine  till  eleven,  in  the  evening,  there 
is  a  minimum  of  six  and  one-half  per  cent,  below  the  average. 
Thus  the  least  mortality  is  during  the  mid-day  hours,  namely, 
from  ten  to  three  o'clock  ;  the  greatest,  during  early  morning 
hours, — from  three  to  six  o'clock.  About  one-third  of  the 
total  deaths  were  children  under  five  years  of  age,  and  they 
show  the  influence  of  the  latter  still  more  strikingly.  At  all 
hours,  from  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  midnight,  the 
deaths  are  at,  or  below,  the  mean ;  the  hours  from  ten  to 
eleven,  A.  M.,  from  four  to  five,  P.  M.,  and  from  nine  to 
ten,  P.  M.,  being  minima;  but  the  hour  after  midnight  being 
the  lowest  maximum.  At  all  the  hours  from  two  to  ten,  A.M., 
the  deaths  are  above  the  mean,  attaining  their  maximum  at 
from  five  to  six,  A.  M.,  when  it  is  forty-five  and  one-half  per 
cent,  above. 


84  WHAT  IS   CHOLERA1 


WHAT    IS    CHOLERA? 

CHOLERA  is  the  exaggeration  of  intestinal  vermicular 
motion. 

This  definition,  explained  in  language  less  professional, 
would  do  more  good  than  all  the  popular  recipes  for  the 
cure  of  cholera  ever  published,  because  it  expresses  the  in- 
herent nature  of  cholera,  and  suggests  the  principles  of  cure, 
in  its  early  stage,  to  the  most  unreflecting  mind. 

The  public  is  none  the  better,  or  wiser,  or  safer,  for  one  of 
all  the  ten  thousand  "cures"  for  cholera  proclaimed  in  the 
public  prints,  with  a  confidence  which  itself  is  a  sufficient 
guarantee  that,  however  well-informed  the  authors  may  be 
in  other  matters,  as  regards  cholera  itself  they  are  criminally 
ignorant ;  for  no  man  has  a  right  to  address  the  public  on  any 
subject  connected  with  its  general  health,  unless  he  under- 
stands that  subject  in  its  broadest  sense,  practically  as  well 
as  theoretically. 

As  cholera  has  become  a  general,  and,  perhaps,  at  least  for 
the  present,  a  permanent  disease  of  the  country,  and,  at  this 
time,  is  more  or  less  prevalent  in  every  State  of  the  Union, 
—  and  one,  too,  which  may,  at  any  hour,  sweep  any  one  of  us 
into  the  grave,  —  it  belongs  to  our  safety  to  understand  its 
nature  for  ourselves,  and  do  what  we  may  to  spread  the 
knowledge  among  those  around  us. 

I  A  "live"  cheese,  or  a  cup  of  fishing-worms,  may  give  an 
idea  of  the  motion  of  the  intestines  in  ordinary  health.  The 
human  gut  is  a  hollow,  flexible  tube,  between  thirty  and  forty 
feet  long ;  but,  in  order  to  be  contained  within  the  body,  it  is, 
to  save  space,  arranged  as  a  sailor  would  a  coil  of  rope,  for- 
ever moving  in  health,  —  moving  too  much  in  some  diseases, 
too  little  in  others.  To  regulate  this  motion  is  the  first  object 
of  the  physician  in  every  disease.  In  headaches,  bilious  affec- 
tions, costiveness,  and  the  like,  this  great  coiled-up  intestine, 
usually  called  "the  bowels,"  is  "torpid,"  and  medicines  are 
given  to  wake  it  up ;  and  what  does  that  cures  the  man. 
Costiveness  is  the  foundation,  —  that  is,  one  of  the  first  be- 
ginnings,—  or  it  is  the  attendant,  of  every  disease  known  to 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA!  85 

man,  in  some  stage  or  other  of  its  progress.  But  the  human 
body  is  made  in  such  a  manner,  that  a  single  step  cannot  be 
taken  without  tending  to  move  the  intestines.  Thus  it  is,  in 
the  main,  that  those  who  move  about  on  their  feet  a  great 
deal  have  the  least  sickness;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  those 
who  sit  a  great  deal,  and  hence  move  about  but  little,  never 
have  sound  health :  it  is  an  impossibility.  It  is  a  rule  to 
which  I  have  never  known  an  exception. 

Cholera  being  a  disease  in  which  the  bowels  move  too  much, 
the  object  should  be  to  lessen  that  motion ;  and,  as  every  step 
a  man  takes  increases  intestinal  motion,  the  very  first  thing 
to  be  done,  in  a  case  of  cholera,  is  to  secure  quietude.  It 
requires  but  a  small  amount  of  intelligence  to  put  these  ideas 
together ;  and  if  they  could  only  be  burnt  in  on  every  heart, 
this  fearful  scourge  would  be  robbed  of  myriads  of  its  victims. 

There  can  be  no  cure  of  cholera  without  quietude, — the 
quietude  of  lying  on  the  back. 

The  physician  who  understands  his  calling  is  always  on  the 
look-out  for  the  instincts  of  nature  ;  and  he  who  follows  them 
most,  and  interferes  with  .them  least,  is  the  one  who  is  often- 
est  successful.  They  are  worth  more  to  him  than  all  the 
rigmarole  stories  which  real  or  imaginary  invalids  pour  in 
'upon  the  physician's  ear,  with  such  facile  volubility.  If,  for 
example,  a  physician  is  called  to  a  speechless  patient, — a 
stranger,  about  whom  no  one  can  give  any  information, — 
he  knows,  if  the  breathing  is  long,  heavy,  and  measured, 
that  the  brain  is  in  danger ;  if  he  breathes  quick  from  the 
upper  part  of  the  chest,  the  abdomen  needs  attention ;  or  it" 
the  abdomen  itself  mainly  moves  in  respiration,  the  lungs  are 
suffering.  In  violent  cases  of  inflammation  of  the  bowels,  the 
patient  shrinks,  involuntarily,  from  any  approach  to  that  part 
of  his  person.  These  are  the  instincts  of  nature,  and  are 
invaluable  guides  in  the  treatment  of  disease. 

Apply  this  principle  to  cholera,  or  even  common  diarrhoea, 
when  the  bowels  do  not  act  more  than  three  or  four  times  a 
day ;  the  patient  feels  such  an  unwillingness  to  motion,  that 
he  even  rises  from  his  seat  with  the  most  unconquerable  re- 
luctance; and  when  he  has,  from  any  cause,  been  moving 
nbout  considerably,  the  first  moment  of  taking  a  comfortable 
seat  is  perfectly  delicious,  and  he  feels  as  if  he  could  almost 


86  WHAT  IS   CHOLERA? 

stay  there  always.  The  whole  animal  creation  is  subject  to 
disease,  and  the  fewest  number,  comparatively  speaking,  die 
of  sickness.  Instinct  is  their  only  physician. 

Perfect  quietude,  then,  on  the  back,  is  the  first,  the  im- 
perative, the  essential  step,  towards  the  cure  of  any  case  of 
cholera.  To  this,  art  may  lend  her  aid  towards  making  that 
quietude  more  perfect,  by  binding  a  cloth  around  the  belly 
pretty  firmly.  This  acts  beneficially,  in  diminishing  the  room 
within  the  abdomen  for  motion.  A  man  may  be  so  pressed 
in  a  crowd  as  not  to  be  able  to  stir.  This  bandage  should  be 
about  a  foot  broad,  and  long  enough  to  be  doubled  over  the 
belly  ;  pieces  of  tape  should  be  sewn  to  one  end  of  the  flannel, 
and  a  corresponding  number  to  another  part,  being  safer  and 
more  effective  fastenings  than  pins.  If  this  cloth  is  of  stout 
woollen  flannel,  it  has  two  additional  advantages,  —  its  rough- 
ness irritates  the -skin,  and  draws  the  blood  to  the  surface 
from  the  interior,  and  by  its  warmth  retains  that  blood  there ; 
thus  preventing  that  cold,  clammy  condition  of  the  skin  which 
takes  place  in  the  last  stages  of  cholera.  Facts  confirm  this. 
When  the  Asiatic  scourge  first  broke  out  among  the  German 
soldiery,  immense  numbers  perished  ;  but  an  imperative  order 
was  issued,  in  the  hottest  weather,  that  each  soldier  wear  a 
stout,  woollen  flannel,  abdominal  compress,  and  immediately 
the  fatality  diminished  more  than  fifty  per  cent.  If  the 
reader  will  try  it,  even  in  cases  of  common  looseness  of 
bowels,  he  will  generally  find  the  most  grateful  and  instan- 
taneous relief. 

The  second  indication  of  instinct  is  to  quench  the  thirst. 
When  the  disease,  now  called  cholera,  first  made  its  appearance 
in  the  United  States,  in  1832,  it  wras  generally  believed  that 
the  drinking  of  cold  water,  soon  after  calomel  was  taken, 
would  certainly  cause  salivation ;  and,  as  calomel  was  usually 
given,  cold  water  was  strictly  interdicted.  Some  of  the  most 
heart-rending  appeals  I  have  ever  noticed  were  for  water, 
water  I  I  have  seen  the  patient,  with  deathly  eagerness, 
inouthe  the  finger-ends  of  the  nurse,  for  the  sake  of  the  drop 
or  two  of  cold  water  there,  while  washing  the  face.  There 
are  two  ways  of  quenching  this  thirst,  —  cold  water,  and  ice. 
Cold  water  often  causes  a  sense  of  fulness  or  oppression,  and 
not  always  satisfying ;  at  other  times  the  stomach  is  so  very 


WHAT  IS  CHOLERA?  87 

irritable,  that  it  is  ejected  in  a  moment.  Ice  does  not  give 
that  unpleasant  fulness,  nor  does  it  increase  the  thirst,  as 
cold  water  sometimes  does,  while  the  quantity  required  is  very 
much  reduced. 

A  Case.  —  About  a  year  ago,  I  was  violently  attacked  with 
cholera  symptoms  in  a  rail-car.  The  prominent  symptoms 
were,  a  continuous  looseness  of  the  most  exhausting  char- 
acter, a  deathly  faintness  and  sickness,  a  drenching  perspi- 
ration, an  overpowering  debility,  and  a  pain  as  if  the  whole 
intestines  were  wrung  together  with  strong  hands,  as  washer- 
women wring  out  clothing.  Not  being  willing  to  take  medi- 
cine, at  least  for  a  while,  and  no  ice  being  presently  obtainable, 
at  the  first  stopping-place  I  ate  ice-cream,  or  rather  endeav- 
ored to  swallow  it  before  it  could  melt.  I  ate  large  quantities 
of  it  continually,  until  the  thirst  was  entirely  abated.  The 
bowels  acted  but  once  or  twice  after  I  began  to  use  it ;  I  fell 
asleep,  and  next  morning  was  at  my  office,  as  usual,  although 
I  was  feeble  for  some  days.  This  may  not  have  been  an  actual 
case  of  Asiatic  cholera,  although  it  was  prevalent  in  the  city 
at  that  time ;  but  it  was  sufficiently  near  it  to  require  some 
attention,  and  this  is  the  main  object  of  this  article,  to  wit, 
attention  to  the  first  symptoms  of  cholera  when  it  prevails. 

According  to  my  experience,  there  is  only  one  objection  to 
the  ice-cream  treatment,  and  that  is,  you  must  swallow  it 
without  tasting  how  good  it  is  :  it  must  be  conveyed  into  the 
stomach  in  as  near  an  icy  state  as  possible. 

The  next  step,  then,  in  the  treatment  of  an  attack  of 
cholera,  is  to  quench  the  thirst  by  keeping  a  plate  of  ice 
beside  you,  broken  up  in  small  pieces,  so  that  they  may  be 
swallowed  whole,  as  far  as  practicable ;  keep  on  chewing  and 
swallowing  the  ice  until  the  thirst  is  most  perfectly  satisfied. 

PRACTICAL    RESULTS. 

The  first  step,  then,  to  be  taken  where  cholera  prevails, 
and  its  symptoms  are  present,  is,  — 

To  lie  down  on  a  bed. 

2d.  Bind  the  abdomen  tightly  with  woolen  flannel. 

3d.  Swallow  pellets  of  ice  to  the  fullest  extent  practicable. 

4th.  Send  for  an  established,  resident,  regular  physician. 
Touch  not  an  atom  of  the  thousand  things  proposed  by  brains 


88  WHAT  JS   CHOLEBA? 

as  "simple"  as  the  remedies  are  represented  to  be,  but  wait 
quietly  and  patiently,  until  the  arrival  of  your  medical  at- 
tendant. 

But  many  of  my  readers  may  be  in  a  condition,  by  distance 
or  otherwise,  where  it  is  not  possible  to  obtain  a  physician  for 
several  hours,  and  where  such  a  delay  might  prove  fatal. 
Under  such  circumstances,  obtain  ten  grains  of  calomel  and 
make  it  into  a  pill  with  a  few  drops  of  cold  water ;  dry  it  a 
little  by  the  fire  or  in  the  sun  and  swallow  it  down.  If  the 
passages  do  not  cease  within  two  hours,  then  swallow  two 
more  of  such  pills,  and  continue  to  swallow  two  more  at  the 
erfd  of  each  two  hours  until  the  bowels  cease  to  give  their 
light-colored  passages,  or  until  the  physician  arrives. 

Why?  In  many  bad  cases  of  Cholera,  the  stomach  will 
retain  nothing,  fluid  or  solid,  cold  water  itself  being  instantly 
returned.  A  calomel  pill  is  almost  as  heavy  as  a  bullet ;  it 
sinks  instantly  to  the  bottom  of  the  stomach,  and  no  power 
of  vomiting  can  return  it.  It  would  answer  just  as  well  to 
swallow  it  in  powder ;  but  the  same  medium  which  would 
hold  it  in  suspension  while  going  down,  would  do  the  same 
while  coming  up. 

The  first  object  of  a  calomel  pill  in  Cholera,  is  to  stop  the 
passages  from  the  bowels.  This  is  usually  done  within  two 
hours ;  but  if  not,  give  two  next  tune,  on  the  principle,  if  a 
certain  force  does  not  knock  a  man  down  the  first  time,  the 
same  force  will  not  do  it  the  second.  Hence,  to  make  the  thing 
sure,  and  to  lose  no  time  —  for  time  is  not  money  here,  but 
life  —  give  a  double  portion.  Not  one  time  in  twenty  will  it 
be  necessary  to  give  the  second  dose  —  not  one  time  in  a  thou- 
sand, the  third;  but  as  soon  as  your  physician  comes,  tell 
him  precisely  what  you  have  done,  what  its  apparent  effects 
are,  and  then  submit  yourself  implicitly  to  his  direction. 

When  the  calomel  treatment  is  effectual,  it  arrests  the  pas- 
sages within  two  hours  ;  and  in  any  time  from  four  to  twelve 
hours  after  being  taken,  it  affects  the  bowels  actively,  and  the 
passages  are  changed  from  a  watery  thinness  to  a  mushy 
thickness  or  consistency,  and  instead  of  being  the  color  of 
rice  water,  or  of  a  milk  and  water  mixture,  they  are  brown, 
or  yellow,  or  green,  or  dark,  or  black  as  ink,  according  to  the 
violence  of  the  attack.  Never  take  any  thing  to  "  work  off" 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA?  89 

calomel,  if  there  is  any  passage  within  ten  hours  after  it  is 
taken ;  but  if  there  is  no  passage  from  the  bowels  within  ten, 
or  at  the  most  twelve  hours  after  taking  calomel,  then  take  an 
injection  of  common  water,  cool  or  tepid.  Eating  ice  or 
drinking  cold  water  after  a  dose  of  calomel,  facilitates  its 
operation,  and  never  can  have  any  effect  whatever  towards 
causing  salivation ;  that  is  caused  by  there  being  no  action 
from  the  bowels,  as  a  consequence  of  the  calomel,  sooner  than 
ten  or  twelve  hours  after  it  has  been  swallowed. 

What  are  the  facts?  I  have  been  between  two  and  three 
years  in  the  midst  of  prevalent  Cholera,  continuously,  winter 
and  summer,  the  deaths  being  from  two  to  two  hundred  a  day. 
In  all  that  time  I  had  no  attack,  never  missed  a  meal  for  the 
want  of  appetite  to  eat,  ate  in  moderation  whatever  I  liked 
and  could  get,  and  lived  in  a  plain,  regular,  quiet  way.  Dur- 
ing this  time  I  had  repeated  occasions  to  travel  one  or  two 
thousand  miles,  or  more,  in  steamboats  on  the  Mississippi, 
with  the  thermometer  among  the  eighties  in  the  shade,  and 
over  a  hundred  on  the  deck,  with  from  one  to  three  hundred 
passengers  on  board,  many  of  whom  were  German  emigrants, 
huddled  up  around  the  boilers  of  a  Western  steamer  —  boat- 
men, Dutchmen,  and  negroes ;  men,  women,  and  children ; 
pigs  and  puppies,  hogs  and  horses,  living  in  illustrated 
equality.  These  persons  came  aboard  from  a  hot  and  dusty 
levee,  crammed  with  decayed  apples,  rotting  oranges,  bad 
oysters,  and  worse  whiskey  ;  and  almost  invariably  the  report 
of  the  first  morning  out,  wrould  be,  Cholera  among  the  deck 
passengers,  and  the  next  thing,  is  there  a  physician  on  board? 
Sometimes  I  was  the  only  one ;  at  others  there  were  several, 
and  we  would  divide.  Practice  of  this  kind  is  always  gratui- 
tous, and  is  attended  with  much  personal  labor,  discomfort, 
and  exposure.  On  the  last  occasion  of  this  kind,  I  treated 
eighteen  cases,  all  of  whom  were  getting  well,  apparently, 
when  landed  along  the  river  at  their  various  homes,  my  desti- 
nation being,  usually,  as  far  as  the  boat  would  go.  There 
were  only  two  deaths  —  one  during  the  first  night,  before  it 
was  known  that  the  cholera  was  aboard  ;  the  other  occurred 
just  as  the  boat  was  landing  at  the  young  man's  home  ;  how 
anxious  he  was  to  reach  that  home  alive,  no  pen  can  ever  por- 
tray. I  did  nothing  for  him.  Before  I  knew  he  was  sick,  he 


90  WHAT  IS   CHOLERA? 

was  in  the  hands  of  a  stranger  who  came  aboard,  and  who 
had  a  remedy  which  was  never  known  to  fail.  During  the 
voyage,  my  patients  slept  around  the  steamboilers  in  mid- 
summer, or  on  the  outer  guards,  exposed  to  the  rain,  which 
several  times  beat  in  upon  them,  and  their  bedding,  being 
every  night  just  at  the  water's  edge,  and  no  protection  against 
its  dampness,  nor  against  the  sun  in  the  heat  of  the  day. 
And  yet  with  these  unfavorable  attendants,  not  one  of  the 
eighteen  died  on  board  the  "Belle  Key,"  in  her  six  days'  jour- 
ney. In  all  these  cases  the  treatment  was  uniform :  quiet, 
ice,  and  calomel  pills,  which  last  I  was  accustomed  to  carry 
with  me.  Some  of  them  had  been  made  five  years,  but  lost 
none  of  their  efficacy.  Whether  it  was  the  ice,  or  the  quiet, 
or  the  pills,  or  faithful  nature  which  kept  these  persons  from 
dying,  I  do  not  pretend  to  say ;  I  merely  state  the  doings  and 
the  result. 

My  own  views  as  to  the  cure  of  cholera,  as  far  as  I  have 
seen,  are,  that  when  calomel  fails  to  cure  it,  everything  else 
will  fail,  and  that  it  will  cure  every  curable  case. 

PREMONITORY    SYMPTOMS    OF    CHOLERA. 

The  cure  of  this  scourge  depends  upon  the  earliness  with 
which  the  means  are  used.  It  can  be  said,  with  less  limitation 
than  of  all  other  diseases  together,  that  cholera  more  certainly 
kills,  if  let  alone,  and  is  certainly  cured,  if  early  attended  to. 
What,  then,  is  the  earliest  and  almost  universal  symptom  of 
approaching  cholera  ?  I  have  never  seen  it  named  in  print  as 
such.  During  the  two  years  above  referred  to,  I  could  tell  in 
my  own  office,  without  reading  a  paper,  or  seeing  or  speak- 
ing to  a  single  person,  the  comparative  prevalence  of  the  dis- 
ease from  day  to  day,  by  the  sensation  which  I  will  name,  and 
I  hope  to  the  benefit  of  thousands  ;  and  perhaps  not  a  single 
reader  will  fail  to  respond  to  the  statement  from  his  own  ex- 
perience. The  bowels  may  be  acting  but  once,  or  less  than 
once,  in  twenty-four  hours,  the  appetite  may  be  good,  and  the 
sleep  may  be  sound ;  but  there  is  an  unpleasant  sensation  in 
the  belly  —  I  do  not,  for  the  sake  of  delicacy,  say  "  stomach." 
for  it  is  a  perversion  of  terms  —  it  is  not  in  the  stomach,  nor  do 
I  call  it  the  abdomen.  Many  persons  don't  know  what  abdo- 
men means.  Thousands  have  such  good  health  that  they  have 


WHAT  IS  CHOLERA1  91 

no  "  realizing  sense  "  of  being  the  owners  of  such  "  apparati" 
or  "  usses  "  as  the  reader  may  fancy,  and  it  is  a  great  pleasure 
to  me  to  write  in  such  a  manner  that  I  know  my  reader  will 
understand  me  perfectly,  without  having  the  headache.  Who 
wants  to  hunt  up  dictionary  words  when  the  thermometer  is  a 
hundred  at  the  coolest  spot  in  his  office?  It  is  bad  enough  to 
have  to  write  what  you  know,  at  such  a  Fahrenheitical  eleva- 
tion as  I  do  now,  but  it  is  not  endurable  to  be  compelled  to 
find  the  meaning  of  another  by  hunting  over  old  lexicons,  and, 
after  all,  running  the  risk  of  discovering  that  the  word  or 
phrase  was,  in  its  application,  as  innocent  of  sense  as  the  nog- 
gin was  of  brains  which  used  the  expression. 

Speaking,  then,  of  that  sensation  of  uneasiness,  without 
acute  pain,  in  the  region  named,  it  comes  on  more  decidedly 
after  an  evacuation  of  the  bowels.  In  health,  this  act  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  sense  of  relief,  or  comfortableness  ;  but  when  the 
cholera  influence  is  in  the  atmosphere,  even  a  regular  passage 
is  followed  by  something  of  this  sort,  but  more  and  more  de- 
cided after  each  action  over  one  in  twenty-four  hours.  The 
feeling  is  not  all ;  there  is  a  sense  of  tiredness  or  weariness 
which  inclines  you  to  take  a  seat ;  to  sit  down,  and  maybe, 
to  bend  over  a  little,  or  to  curl  up,  if  on  a  bed.  This  sensa- 
tion is  coming  cholera,  and  if  heeded  when  first  noticed, 
would  save,  annually,  thousands.  The  patient  should  remain 
on  the  bed  until  he  felt  as  if  he  wanted  to  get  up,  and  as  if 
it  would  be  pleasurable  to  walk  about.  While  observing  this 
quiet,  and  while  swallowing  lumps  of  ice,  nothing  should  be 
eaten  until  there  is  a  decided  appetite,  and  what  is  eaten 
should  be  farina,  or  arrow-root,  or  tapioca,  or  corn  starch, 
or  what  is  better  than  all,  a  mush  made  of  rice  flour,  or  if 
preferred,  common  rice  parched  as  coffee,  and  then  boiled,  as 
rice  is  usually  for  the  table,  about  twelve  minutes,  then  strain 
the  liquid  from  the  rice  ;  return  the  rice  to  the  stew  pan  and  let 
it  steam  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  a  short  distance  from  the 
fire ;  it  will  then  be  done,  the  grains  will  be  separate  ;  it  may 
then  be  eaten  with  a  little  butter,  at  intervals  of  five  hours. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  thousands  upon  thousands  have 
died  of  cholera,  who  might  now  be  living  had  they  done 
nothing  but  observed  strict  bodily  quietness  under  the  prompt- 
ings of  nature,  the  greatest  and  the  best  physician. 


92  WHAT  IS  CHOLERA  ? 

What  is  a  "  looseness  f  "  An  indefinite  description  or  direc- 
tion in  reference  to  health  is  worse  than  none  at  all.  Physi- 
cians very  generally  and  very  greatly  err  in  this  respect,  and 
much  of  their  "  want  of  success  "  is  attributable  to  this  very 
omission.  A  patient  is  told  he  "  mustn't  allow  himself  to  be- 
come costive,"  mustn't  eat  too  much,  must  take  light  suppers, 
mustn't  over  exercise.  These  things  do  much  mischief.  The 
proper  way  to  give  a  medical  direction  is  to  use  the  most  com- 
mon words  in  their  ordinary  sense,  and  in  a  manner  not  only 
to  make  them  easily  understood,  but  impossible  to  be  misun- 
derstood, and  to  take  it  for  granted  that  the  person  prescribed 
for  knows  nothing.  How  many  readers  of  mine  have  an  easy 
and  complete  idea  of  the  word  "expectorate  "  in  medicine,  or 
regeneration  in  religion?  and  yet  the  terms  expectoration 
and  regeneration  are  used  as  glibly  by  preacher  and  physician 
as  if  their  meaning  were  self-evident.  Why  shoot  above 
people's  heads,  and  talk  about  justification,  and  sanctification, 
and  glorification,  and  a  great  man}'  other  kinds  of  "  ations," 
when  the  terms  do  not  convey  to  one  ear  in  a  dozen  any  clear, 
well-defined,  precise  idea?  And  so,  emphatically,  with  the 
words  looseness  and  costiveness  when  applied  to  the  bowels. 
They  are  relative  terms,  and  a  practical  idea  of  what  they  are 
is  only  to  be  conveyed  by  telling  what  they  are,  and  what 
they  are  not.  One  man  will  say  he  is  very  costive,  and  that 
he  has  not  had  an  action  from  the  bowels  in  three  or  four 
days  or  more ;  but  a  failure  of  the  bowels  to  act  in  twenty- 
four,  or  forty-eight,  or  seventy-two  hours,  is  not  of  itself  cos- 
tiveness, for  the  person  may  have  had  four  or  five  passages  in 
a  single  day ;  then  nature  requires  time  to  make  up,  so  as  to 
average  one  a  day.  Costiveness  applies  to  the  hardness  and 
dryness  of  the  alviiie  evacuations,  and  not  to  relative  fre- 
quency. 

A  more  indefinite  idea  prevails  in  reference  to  the  more 
important  (in  cholera  times  at  least)  terms  looseness,  loose 
bowels,  and  the  like.  The  expression  must  be  measured  by 
color  and  consistency  of  the  discharges  in  reference  to  cholera. 
We  have  heard  and  read  a  great  deal  about  rice-water  dis- 
charges. Reader  of  mine, — physicians,  nurses,  and  cooks 
exceptcd,  —  lay  this  down  a  moment,  and  say  if  you  ever  saw 
rice  \vater  in  your  life.  Then,  again,  how  is  the  reader  to 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA!  93 

know  whether  the  cholera  rice  water  is  applied  to  rice  water  as 
to  color,  or  consistence,  or  taste,  or  smell.  The  term  "loose- 
ness "  as  applied  to  Asiatic  cholera,  as  a  premonitory  symp- 
tom, is  simply  this :  if,  in  cholera  times,  a  man  passes  from 
his  bowels,  even  but  a  single  time,  a  dirty,  lightish-colored 
fluid,  of  consistence  and  appearance,  a  few  feet  distant,  of  a 
mixture  of  half  and  half  milk  and  water,  that  is  a  premonition 
of  cholera  begun,  and  he  will  be  dead  in  perhaps  twenty-four 
hours  at  furthest ;  and  as  the  passages  become  less  frequent, 
and  of  a  darker,  or  greener,  or  thicker  nature,  there  is  hope 
of  life.  It  does  not  require  two  such  passages  to  make  a 
looseness  ;  one  such  is  a  looseness,  and  a  very  dangerous  one. 
Nor  does  it  require  a  gallon  in  quantity ;  a  single  table-spoon- 
ful, if  it  weakens,  is  the  alarm-bell  of  death  in  cholera  times. 
But  do  not  suppose  that  if  looseness  of  bowels  is  a  premoni- 
tory symptom  of  cholera,  costiveness  —  that  is,  an  action  of 
the  bowels  once  in  every  two  or  three  days  —  is  a  preventive, 
or  an  evidence  that  you  are  in  no  danger ;  for  constipation  is 
often  a  forerunner  of  looseness.  Some  of  the  most  fatal  chol- 
era cases  I  have  seen  were  characterized  by  constipation  pre- 
vious to  the  looseness  —  the  patient  having  concluded  that  as 
there  was  nothing  like  looseness,  but  the  very  reverse,  he  was 
in  no  danger,  and  consequently  had  no  need  of  carefulness  in 
eating  or  drinking,  or  anything  else.  Unusual  constipation, 
that  is,  if  the  bowels,  during  the  prevalence  of  cholera,  act  less 
frequently  than  usual,  or  if  they  even  act  with  the  same  fre- 
quency, but  the  discharges  are  very  hard  or  bally,  then  a 
physician  should  be  at  once  consulted.  That  is  the  time 
when  safe  and  simple  remedies  will  accomplish  more  than  the 
most  heroic  means,  a  few  days  or  even  a  few  hours  later. 

THEORY   OF   CHOLERA. 

It  is,  in  its  nature,  common  diarrhoea  intensified,  just  as  yel- 
low fever  is  an  intensification  of  common  bilious  fever  —  a 
concentrated  form  of  it.  But  what  causes  this  loose  condition 
of  the  bowels,  which  is  not  indeed  a  premonitory  symptom  of 
cholera,  but  which  is  cholera  itself? 

That  which  precedes  the  loose  bowels  of  diarrhoea  and  chol- 
era is  liver  inaction :  the  liver  is  torpid  ;  that  is,  it  does  not 
abstract  the  bile  from  the  blood,  or  if  it  does,  this  bile,  instead 


94  WHAT  IS   CHOLERA  ? 

of  being  discharged,  drop  by  drop,  from  the  gall  bladder  into 
the  top  or  beginning  of  the  intestines,  where  the  food  passes 
out  of  the  stomach  into  the  bowels  proper,  is  retained  and 
more  or  less  re-absorbed  and  thrown  into  the  general  circula- 
tion, rendering  it,  every  hour,  thicker  and  thicker,  and  more 
impure  and  black,  until  at  length  it  almost  ceases  to  flow 
through  the  veins,  just  as  water  will  very  easily  pass  along  a 
hose  pipe  or  hollow  tube,  while  mush  or  stirabout  would  do 
so  with  great  difficulty :  and  not  passing  out  of  the  veins, 
but  still  coming  in,  the  veins  are  at  length  so  much  distended 
that  the  thinner  portions  ooze  through  the  blood-vessels.  That 
which  oozes  through  the  blood-vessels  on  the  inner  side  of  the 
stomach  and  bowels,  is  but  little  more  than  water,  and  consti- 
tutes the  rice-water  discharges,  so  much  spoken  of  in  this  con- 
nection :  that  which  oozes  through  the  blood-vessels  on  the 
surface  constitutes  the  sweat  which  bedews  the  whole  body 
shortly  before  death ;  and  it  is  this  clogging  up  of  the  thick, 
black  blood  in  the  small  veins  which  gives  the  dark  blue  ap- 
pearance of  the  skin  in  the  collapse  stage. 

What  is  the  reason  that  the  liver  is  torpid, — does  not 
work,  —  does  not  withdraw  the  bile  from  the  blood? 

It  is  because  the  blood  has  become  impure,  and  being  thus, 
when  it  enters  the  liver  it  fails  to  produce  the  natural  stimu- 
lus, and  thus  does  not  wake  it  up  to  its  healthful  action,  just 
as  the  habitual  drinker  of  the  best  brandy  fails  to  be  put  w  in 
his  usual  trim  "  by  a  "  villainous  article." 

But  how  does  the  blood  become  impure  ?  It  becomes  im- 
pure by  there  being  absorbed  into  the  circulation  what  some 
call  malaria,  and  others  call  miasm.  But  by  whatever  name 
it  may  be  called,  this  death-dealing  substance  is  a  gas  arising 
from  the  combination  of  three  substances,  heat,  moisture  and 
vegetation.  Without  these  three  things  in  combination  there 
can  be  no  "cholera  atmosphere," — there  can  be  no  epidemic 
cholera  in  these  ages  of  the  world.  Vegetable  matter  decom- 
poses at  a  heat  of  between  seventy  and  eighty  degrees,  and 
that  amount  of  heat,  in  combination  with  moisture  and  some 
vegetable  substance,  must  always  precede  epidemic  cholera. 

The  decomposition  in  burial  grounds,  in  potters'  fields,  or 
of  animal  matter  in  any  stage  or  form,  does  not  excite  or  cause 
cholera ;  if  anything,  it  prevents  it.  I  have  no  disposition  to 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA?  95 

argue  upon  these  points.  I  merely  give  them  as  my  views, 
which,  I  think,  time  and  just  observation  will  steadily  corrob- 
orate. There  are  many  interesting  questions  which  might  be 
discussed  in  this  connection,  but  the  article  is  already  longer 
than  wras  designed.  The  reader  may  think  that  he  could  state 
some  strong  facts  in  contravention  of  those  given,  but  I  think 
it  quite  likely  that  on  investigation,  these  facts  of  his  will  be 
corroborants.  For  example  :  how  is  it  that  cholera  has  raged 
in  latitudes  where  snow  is  on  the  ground  five  or  ten  feet 
deep  ?  The  people  in  such  countries  are  generally  poor ; 
myriads  of  them  live  in  snow  houses,  which  are  bare  spaces 
dug  in  the  snow,  with  no  outlet  but  one  for  the  smoke,  and 
in  this  house  they  live  with  their  domestic  animals,  and  all  the 
family  offal  for  months  together,  so  that  in  the  spring  of  the 
year  there  is  a  crust  of  many  inches  of  made  flooring,  while 
the  interior  heat  from  their  own  bodies,  and  from  the  fire  for 
cooking  purposes,  is  often  eighty  or  ninety  degrees. 

The  theory  of  cure.  — I  have  said  that  a  torpid  liver  is  an 
immediate  cause  of  cholera,  that  it  does  not  work  actively 
enough  to  separate  the  bile,  the  impure  particles  from  the 
blood.  Whatever,  then,  wakes  up  the  liver,  removes  this  tor- 
pidity ;  or,  in  plainer  language,  whatever  stimulates  the  liver 
to  greater  activity,  —  that  is  curative  of  cholera.  Calomel 
is  a  medicine  which  acts  upon,  which  stimulates  the  liver  to 
action,  with  a  promptness  and  certainty  infinitely  beyond  all 
the  other  remedies  yet  known  to  men,  and  the  use  of  any 
other  medicine  as  a  substitute  in  any  plain  case  of  cholera,  is, 
in  my  opinion,  a  trifling  with  human  life  ;  not  that  other  rem- 
edies are  not  successful,  but  that  this  is  more  certain  to  act 
upon  the  liver  than  all  others ;  and  what  sensible  man  wants 
to  try  a  lesser  certainty  in  so  imminent  a  danger. 

My  whole  view  as  to  cholera  and  calomel  is  simply  this, 
That  while  cholera  is  arrested  and  cured  by  a  variety  of  other 
agents,  calomel  will  cure  in  all  these  and  thousands  of  others 
where  other  remedies  have  no  more  effect  than  a  thimbleful 
of  ashes ;  that  calomel  will  cure  any  case  of  cholera  which 
any  other  remedy  cures,  and  that  it  will  cure  millions  of 
other  cases  which  no  other  remedy  can  reach  ;  that  when  cal- 
omel fails  to  cure,  all  other  things  will  inevitably  fail. 

How  do  we  know  all  this?     The  natural  color  of  healthy 


96  WHAT  IS  CHOLERA? 

and  properly  secreted  bile,  is  yellowish,  hence  that  is  the 
color  of  an  ordinarily  healthful  discharge  from  the  bowels ; 
but  as  the  liver  becomes  torpid,  the  bile  becomes  greenish, 
and  still  further  on,  black.  If  you  give  calomel  under  such 
circumstances,  black,  green,  or  yellow  discharges  result, 
according  to  the  degree  of  torpidity.  When  the  liver  gives 
out  no  bile  at  all,  the  passages  are  watery  and  light  colored. 
The  action  of  a  calomel  pill  in  cholera,  is  to  arrest  the  dis- 
charges from  the  bowels,  and  this  it  does,  usually,  within  two 
hours,  and  in  five,  eight,  or  ten,  or  twelve  hours  more,  it 
starts  the  bowels  to  act  again  ;  but  the  substance  discharged, 
is  no  longer  colorless  and  thin,  but  darker  and  thicker,  and 
less  debilitating,  and  the  patient  is  safe  in  proportion  as  these 
passages  are  green,  or  dark  colored.  I  have  seen  them  some- 
times like  clots  of  tar. 

PREVENTIVES    OP    CHOLERA. 

There  are  none,  there  never  can  be,  except  so  far  as  it  may 
be  done  by  quietude  of  body  and  mind,  by  personal  cleanli- 
ness, by  regular  and  temperate  habits  of  life,  and  the  use  of 
plain,  accustomed  nourishing  food. 

Anything  taken  medicinally  as  a  preventive  of  cholera,  will, 
inevitably  and  under  all  circumstances,  increase  the  liability 
to  an  attack. 

Why?  Nothing  can  prevent  cholera,  in  a  cholera  atmos- 
phere, beyond  the  natural  agents  of  nutrition,  except  in  pro- 
portion to  its  stimulating  properties.  The  liver  takes  its 
share  of  the  general  stimulus  and  works  with  more  vigor. 
Where  the  system  is  under  the  effect  of  the  stimulus,  it  is 
safer ;  but  it  is  a  first  truth  that  the  stimulant,  sooner  or  later 
expends  its  force,  as  a  drink  of  brandy,  for  example.  That 
moment  the  system  begins  to  fail,  and  falls  as  far  below  its 
natural  condition  as  it  was  just  before,  above  it,  and  while  in 
that  condition  is  just  as  much  more  susceptible  of  cholera,  as 
it  was  less  liable  under  the  action  of  the  stimulant,  until,  by 
degrees,  it  rises  up  to  its  natural  equilibrium,  its  natural  con- 
dition. You  can,  it  is  true,  repeat  the  stimulus,  but  it  must 
be  done  with  the  utmost  regularity,  and  just  at  the  time  the 
effects  of  the  previous  one  begin  to  subside.  This,  it  will  at 
once  be  seen,  requires  a  nicety  of  observation,  and  correct- 


WHAT  IS    CHOLERA?  97 

ness  of  judgment  which  not  one  in  a  multitude  can  bestow, 
saying  nothing  of  another  nicety  of  judgment,  that  of  gradu- 
ally increasing  the  amount  of  the  stimulant,  so  that  the  effect 
shall  be  kept  up  to  the  regular  notch  ;  for  a  given  amount  of 
one  stimulant  will  inevitably  fail,  after  a  few  repetitions,  to 
produce  the  same  amount  of  stimulation  ;  and  the  moment  that 
amount  fails  to  be  raised,  that  moment  the  person  is  more 
susceptible  of  cholera  than  if  he  had  taken  nothing  at  all. 

He  who  takes  any  medicinal  agent,  internal  or  external,  for 
the  prevention  of  cholera,  commits  an  act  of  the  most  con- 
summate folly  ;  and  I  should  consider  myself  an  ignoramus  or 

a  knave  were  I  to  concoct  a  professed  anti-cholera  mixture. 

• 

THE    SUMMING    UP. 

When  cholera  is  present  in  any  community,  each  person 
should  consider  himself  as  attacked  with  cholera,  — 

1st.  If  the  bowels  act  less  frequently  than  usual. 

2d.  If  the  bowels  act  oftener  than  twice  in  twenty-four 
hours. 

3d.  If  the  discharge  from  the  bowels  is  of  a  dirty  white  in 
color,  and  watery  in  its  consistence. 

4th.  If  he  have  any  indefinable  sensation  about  the  belly, 
which  not  only  unpleasantly  reminds  him  that  he  has  such  an 
article,  but  also  inclines  him  to  sit  down,  and  makes  sitting 
down  a  much  more  pleasant  operation  than  usual. 

Some  persons  may  think  that  this  fourth  item  is  putting 
"  too  fine  a  point "  on  the  matter,  and  that  it  is  being  over 
careful ;  but  I  know  that  these  very  feelings  do,  in  a  vast 
majority  of  fatal  cases  of  cholera,  precede  the  actual  "  loose- 
ness "  so  universally  and  so  wrongfully  regarded  as  the  pre- 
monitory symptom  of  cholera ;  "  looseness,"  is  not  a  premon- 
itory symptom  of  cholera ;  it  is  cholera  begun  ! 

Whenever  cholera  is  prevalent  in  any  community,  it  is  as 
much  actual  cholera,  under  such  circumstances,  as  the  first 
little  flame  on  the  roof  of  a  house,  constitutes  "  a  house  on 
tire." 

When  cholera  is  present  as  an  epidemic — as  a  "falling 
upon  the  people,"  which  is  the  literal  meaning  of  the  word 
epidemic,  in  a  liberal  translation  —  a  person  may  have  one 
regular  action  every  twenty-four  hours ;  it  may  not  be  hard 


98  WHAT  IS  CHOLERA? 

and  dry,  it  may  not  be  in  lumps  or  balls,  and  it  may  be  con- 
sistent enough  to  maintain  its  shape  aud  form,  aud  this  is 
neither  too  costive  nor  too  loose,  and  is  just  what  it  ought  to 
be  in  health ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  if  a  person  in  a  cholera 
atmosphere  has  such  a  passage  from  the  bowels,  and  it  is  fol- 
lowed not  merely  by  an  absence  of  that  comfortableness  and 
sense  of  relief  with  which  all  are  familiar  in  health,  but  by  a 
positive  sensation,  not  agreeable,  not  painful,  but  unpleasant, 
incliniug  to  stillness,  and  there  is  a  feeling  as  if  a  slight  stoop- 
ing, or  bending  forward  of  the  body  would  be  agreeable, — 
these  are  the  premonitories  of  Asiatic  Cholera ;  and  it  is  won- 
derful that  they  have  never,  as  far  as  I  know,  been  published 
in  book  or  newspaper,  for  popular  information.  At  such  a 
stage  no  physician  is  needed,  no  physic  is  required,  only 
quietude  on  the  back,  ice  to  be  eaten  if  there  is  any  thirst, 
and  no  food  but  toasted  bread,  and  tea  of  some  kind,  green, 
black,  sage,  sassafras,  or  any  other  of  the  common  herbs. 
Keep  up  attention  to  these  things  until  you  can  walk  without 
any  uncomfortableness  whatever,  and  even  feel  as  if  it  were 
doing  you  good,  and  until  you  are  not  sensible  of  anything 
unpleasant  about  the  belly. 

If  you  get  tired  of  tea  and  toast,  or  if  it  is  not  agreeable 
to  you,  use  in  their  place,  boiled  rice,  or  sago,  or  tapioca,  or 
arrow-root,  or  corn  starch,  or  mush  made  of  rice  flour. 
With  all  these  articles,  a  little  boiled  milk  may  be  used,  or 
they  may  be  eaten  with  a  little  butter,  or  syrup  of  some  kind, 
for  a  change. 

If,  under  the  four  circumstances  named  on  page  97,  there 
is  not  an  improvement  in  the  symptoms  within  a  very  few 
hours,  by  the  three  things  there  named,  to  wit :  — 

1st.  Quietude  on  your  back,  on  a  bed. 

2d.  Eating  ice,  if  thirsty. 

3d.  A  diet  of  tea  and  toast,  or  boiled  rice,  or  some  of  the 
starches,  then  do  not  trifle  with  a  holy,  human  life,  by  taking 
any  medicine  on  your  own  responsibility,  nor  by  the  advice  of 
any  unprofessional  man ;  but,  by  all  means,  send  for  a  physi- 
cian. But  if  you  have  violent  vomiting,  or  have  a  single 
lightish  colored,  watery  passage,  or  even  a  thinnish  passage 
every  hour  or  two,  and  no  physician  can  be  had  in  several 
hours,  do  not  wait  for  him,  but  swallow  a  ten-grain  calomel 


99 

pill,  and  repeat  it  every  second  hour,  until  the  symptoms 
abate,  or  the  physician  arrives  ;  or,  if  at  the  end  of  two  hours 
after  the  first  pill  has  been  taken,  the  symptoms  have  become 
aggravated,  take  two  calomel  pills  of  ten  grains  each,  and 
then  patiently  wait.  If  the  passages  stop,  if  the  vomiting 
ceases,  }^ou  are  safe ;  and  if,  in  addition  to  the  cessation  of 
vomiting,  or  looseness,  or  both,  the  passages  become  green, 
or  dark,  and  more  consistent  within  eight,  or  ten,  or  twelve 
hours  after  the  first  pill,  and,  in  addition,  urination  returns, 
you  will  get  well  without  anything  else  in  addition  beyond 
judicious  nursing. 

The  most  certain  indication  of  recovery  from  an  attack  of 
Asiatic  Cholera  is  the  return  of  free  urination  ;  for  during 
the  attack  it  ceases  altogether, —  a  most  important  fact,  but 
not  known,  perhaps,  to  one  person  in  ten  thousand,  and  is 
worth  more  than  all  other  symptoms  together. 

CAUSES    OF    CHOLERA. 

A  very  great  deal  has  been  uselessly  written  for  public 
perusal  about  the  causes  of  cholera.  One  person  will  tell 
you  that  a  glass  of  soda  gave  him  cholera,  or  a  mess  of 
huckleberries,  or  cucumbers,  or  green  corn,  or  cabbages,  which 
is  just  about  as  true  as  the  almost  universal  error,  that  a  bad 
cold  causes  consumption.  A  bad  cold  never  did,  nor  ever 
can  originate  consumption,  any  more  than  the  things  above 
named  originate  cholera.  A  bad  cold  excites  consumption  in 
a  person  whose  lungs  are  already  tuberculated,  not  otherwise, 
certainly;  and  so  green  corn,  or  cucumbers,  or  cabbages,  or 
any  other  food,  whatever  it  may  be,  which  is  not  well  digested 
when  it  passes  into  the  stomach,  will  excite  cholera,  when  a 
person  is  living  in  a  cholera  atmosphere,  and  the  atmosphere 
is  made  "choleric"  by  its  holding  in  suspension  some  emana- 
tion which  is  the  product  of  vegetable  decomposition. 

Limestone  ivater.  —  Much  has  been  written  about  this  agent 
as  a  cause  of  cholera.  Those  who  know  least  are  most  posi- 
tive. It  may  be  true  to  some  extent,  and,  under  some  cir- 
cumstances, it  may  be  an  excitant  of  cholera ;  but  I  cannot 
think  it  is  "  per  se  "  —  that  it  is  remarkably  or  necessarily  so. 
It  is  known  that  the  whole  southwest  has  suffered  from 
cholera,  New  Orleans  especially ;  yet  there  is  scarcely  a 


100  WHAT  IS  CHOLERA! 

v 

decent  dwelling  there  which  has  not  a  cistern  attached  to  it, 
above  ground,  and  wholly  supplied  by  rain  water ;  and  this  is 
the  usual  drink,  and  it  is  the  same  case  with  multitudes  of 
the  better  class  of  dwellings  in  the  southern  country 

As  to  escaping  prevalent  cholera,  the  great  general  rules 
are  :  — 

1st.  Make  no  violent  changes  in  your  mode  of  life,  whether 
in  eating,  or  drinking,  or  sleeping,  or  exercise. 

2d.  Endeavor  to  attain  composure  of  mind,  quietude  of 
body,  regularity  of  all  bodily  habits,  temperance  in  the  use 
of  plain,  substantial,  nourishing  food;  and  let  your  drinks  be 
a  moderate  amount  of  tea,  and  coffee,  and  cold  water.  If  ac- 
customed to  use  wine  or  brandy,  or  any  other  beverage  or 
alcoholic  stimulants,  make  no  change,  for  change  is  death. 
If  any  change  at  all,  it  should  be  a  regular,  steady,  system- 
atic increase.  But  as  soon  as  the  cholera  has  disappeared, 
drink  no  more. 

Fruits,  in  cholera  times,  are  beneficial,  if  properly  used. 
They  should  be  ripe,  raw,  fresh,  perfect,  —  should  be  eaten 
alone  without  cream  or  sugar,  and  without  fluids  of  any  kind 
for  an  hour  after,  and  they  should  not  be  eaten  later  in  the 
day  than  the  usual  dinner  hour  of  two  P.  M. 

In  cholera  times  nothing  should  be  taken  after  dinner,  ex- 
cept a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  and  a  cup  of  tea  of 
some  kind.  This,  indeed  ought  to  be  the  rule  for  all  who 
wish  to  live  long  and  healthfully. 

The  indefinite  unpleasantness  in  the  bowels,  which  I  have 
so  much  insisted  upon  as  the  real  premonitory  symptom  of 
Asiatic  cholera  begun,  whether  there  be  looseness  or  constipa- 
tion, most  probably  precedes  every  acknowledged  attack  of 
cholera,  from  hours  up  to  days.  There  are  no  means  for 
proving  this  certainly ;  for  the  mass  of  people  are  too  unob- 
serving.  But  it  most  certainly  is  a  safe  rule,  in  cholera 
times,  to  regard  it  as  a  premonitory,  and  to  act  accordingly. 

Whatever  I  have  said  of  cholera  in  the  preceding  pages,  I 
wish  to  be  understood  as  applicable  to  what  has  come  under 
my  own  observation  during  the  general  prevalence  of  cholera 
in  a  community. 

In  different  states  and  countries  there  are  circumstances 
which  modify  the  disease,  its  symptoms,  and  everything  con- 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERAS  101 

nected  with  it,  such  as  locality,  variety  of  exciting  causes, 
their  different  degrees  of  virulence  or  concentratedness,  the 
different  habits  and  modes  of  life.  These  things  constitute 
the  reason  of  the  various  modes  of  treatment,  and  the  great 
error  has  been  in  publishing  a  successful  remedy  in  one  local- 
ity, and  relying  upon  it  in  another.  But  the  treatment  by 
quietude,  ice,  and  calomel,  is  equally  applicable  on  every  spot 
of  the  earth's  surface,  wherever  a  case  of  epidemic  cholera 
occurs,  since  the  essential  cause  of  cholera  is  everywhere  the 
same,  to  wit,  the  miasm  of  vegetable  decomposition ;  the 
effects  of  that  cause  are  the  same,  to  wit,  a  failure  on  the 
part  of  the  liver  to  work  with  sufficient  vigor  to  withdraw  the 
bile  from  the  blood  and  pass  it  out  of  the  system ;  and  the 
mode  of  removing  that  effect  is  the  same,  to  wit,  the  stimu- 
lation of  the  liver  to  increased  action.  And  although,  in 
milder  forms,  a  variety  of  agencies  may  stimulate  the  liver  to 
work,  and  thus  restore  health,  yet,  inasmuch  as  calomel  is 
infinitely  more  reliable  than  all  other  liver  stimulants  yet 
known,  it  is  recommended  as  having  precedence  of  all  others, 
on  the  ground  previously  named,  that  when  danger  is  immi- 
nent, and  a  few  hours  makes  the  difference  between  life  and 
death,  it  is  unwise  to  trust  to  a  less  certain  agent  when  the 
more  certain  one  is  equally  at  hand,  and  is  the  easiest  medi- 
cine known  to  be  taken,  as  it  has  no  appreciable  taste,  its 
bulk  is  exceedingly  small,  and  by  reason  of  its  weight  it  sinks 
to  the  bottom  of  the  stomach,  and  cannot  be  rejected  except 
in  rare  instances. 

Some  of  my  views  are  peculiar,  perhaps.  They  were 
formed  from  observations  made  in  1832,  '3,  and  '4,  my  first 
experiences  being  on  a  crowded  steamboat  which  left  Louis- 
ville, Kentucky,  in  October,  1832.  In  twenty-four  hours  the 
cholera  broke  out.  It  had  just  reached  the  west  from  Cana- 
da. No  one  knew  anything  about  its  nature,  symptoms,  or 
treatment,  practically,  and  the  panic  was  terrible.  I  had  re- 
tired early.  A  Virginia  gentleman  was  lying  on  the  floor 
suffering  from  an  attack.  At  midnight  I  awoke  and  found 
the  cabin  deserted,  not  a  living  creature  in  it,  nor  on  the  boat 
either,  as  well  as  I  now  remember ;  and  every  berth  but  mine 
was  entirely  divested  of  its  bedding.  The  man  had  died,  and 
they  were  airing  the  boat,  while  a  few  were  engaged  in  depos- 


102  WHAT  IS   CHOLERA1} 

iting  him  at  the  foot  of  a  tree  in  a  coarse  wooden  box,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio.  The  boat  was  bound  for  St.  Louis,  but 
few  of  her  passengers  to  that  port,  or  officers,  lived  to  reach 
their  destination.  I  was  young,  then,  had  perfect  health,  and 
knew  no  fear.  Ever  since  that  terrible  "  trip,"  and  the  expe- 
riences of  the  following  years,  every  thing  that  I  have  seen 
or  read  on  the  subject  of  cholera  has  seemed  to  me  to  confirm 
the  views  advanced  in  the  preceding  pages,  and  I  trust  that 
general  readers,  as  well  as  professional  men,  who  may  chance 
to  see  this  article,  will  hereafter  direct  their  attention  to  all 
facts  bearing  upon  cholera,  and  notice  how  far  such  observed 
facts  will  bear  them  out  in  concluding,  1st,  that  epidemic 
Asiatic  cholera  cannot  exist  aside  from  moisture,  heat,  and 
vegetable  matter ;  2d,  that  quietude,  ice,  and  calomel  will 
cure  where  anything  else  will,  and  will  succeed  in  multitudes 
of  cases  where  all  things  else  have  signally  failed. 

CALOMEL   PREJUDICES. 

If,  then,  calomel  is  such  an  admirable  agent  in  cholera,  why 
is  it  not  universally  used?  I  might  as  well  ask,  if  honesty  is 
the  best  policy,  why  are  not  the  majority  of  men  honest  from 
principle  ?  It  is  because  the  majority  of  men  are  ignorant  or 
misinformed.  Many  persons  do  not  know  the  power  of  calo- 
mel in  curing  cholera,  while  others  are  afraid  of  it  because  it 
sometimes  salivates.  Suppose  it  does,  better  to  run  the  risk 
of  salivation  than  to  die.  •  And  even  if  salivated,  a  man  is  not 
necessarily  permanently  injured  by  salivation.  I  have  been 
badly  salivated  several  times,  very  many  years  ago,  but  I  be- 
lieve I  have  as  good  health  as  most  men.  I  do  not  recollect 
to  have  lost  three  meals  from  sickness  in  fifteen  years  past, 
except  from  sea-sickness,  and  no  doubt  there  are  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  persons,  who  have  been  salivated,  who  can  speak 
similarly.  But  the  objection  is  perfectly  childish  when  it  is 
remembered  that  perhaps  a  thousand  persons  in  succession 
may  take  calomel,  and  not  two  in  the  thousand  be  salivated. 
I  might  say  not  two  in  ten  thousand,  and  that  in  a  vast  major- 
ity of  those  who  are  not  designedly  salivated,  this  salivation 
is  the  result  of  injudicious  administration  ;  thus, 

Salivation  is  caused  by  keeping  the  system  too  long  under 
the  influence  of  calomel,  in  two  ways  :  — 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA?  103 

1st.  By  giving  small  doses  at  short  intervals. 

2d.  By  giving  an  amount  so  small  that  it  fails  to  work 
itself  off  in  ten  or  twelve  hours. 

3d.  By  giving  a  larger  amount,  but  mixing  opium  in  some 
form  or  other  with  it ;  for  in  all  case  the  more  opium  or  other 
anodyne  you  give  with  a  dose  of  calomel,  the  longer  it  will 
be  in  producing  its  legitimate  action. 

The  best  method  of  administering  calomel  is  to  give 
enough  at  one  time  to  make  it  act  of  itself  within  twelve 

O 

hours,  and  if  it  does  not  act  within  that  time,  take  an  injec- 
tion of  half  a  pint  of  tepid  water,  or  a  table  spoonful  of  salts 
in  a  half  pint  of  warm  water  every  hour  until  the  bowels  do 
act.  Any  action  of  the  bowels  at  all  after  six  hours  since 
taking  the  calomel,  may  be  set  down  as  an  action  from  calo- 
mel, and  nothing  need  be  done  to  "  work  it  off." 

If  salivation  is  not  designed,  it  is  not  best  to  give  a  dose 
of  calomel  oftener  than  once  a  week. 

By  observing  the  two  rules  just  stated,  I  do  not  believe 
that  any  general  practitioner  will  have  one  case  of  undesired 
salivation  in  ten  years'  practice. 

It  is  important  for  the  reader  to  remember  that  there  are 
sporadic  cases,  that  is,  scattering  cases  of  cholera,  which  may 
not  be  preceded  by  constipation  or  looseness  of  bowels,  or 
uneasiness  sufficiently  decided  to  have  attracted  the  observa- 
tion of  the  patient ;  for  in  many  cases,  the  patient  declares 
that  he  "felt "  as  well  as  he  ever  did  in  his  life  ;  or  acquaint- 
ances remark  that  he  "appeared "  to  be  in  perfect  health,  and 
yet  to-day  he  is  dead  of  cholera.  Yet  I  very  much  doubt  if  a 
case  of  cholera  ever  occurred  without  the  premonitions  above 
named,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  Still,  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses, and  to  be  on  the  safe  side,  let  no  one  who  has  loose- 
ness to-day,  in  cholera  times,  conclude  that  it  cannot  be  chol- 
era, because  he  "  felt"  so  and  so  the  day  before,  or  because 
no  premonitions  were  observed  ;  rather  let  him  conclude  they 
were  slight  or  unobserved,  and  act  as  he  should  do  if  he  were 
perfectly  assured  that  he  had  at  that  moment  in  his  own  per- 
son, undisputed  epidemic  Asiatic  cholera.  The  truth  is,  it  is 
as  impossible  for  a  man  in  perfect  health  to  be  stricken  down 
in  a  moment  with  a  dangerous  disease,  as  it  is  for  a  man  who 
has  been  honest  from  principle  for  a  lifetime,  to  become  in  a 
day  a  forger  or  a  swindler. 


104  WHAT  IS  CHOLERA? 

As  far  as  my  observation  has  extended,  I  believe  that  the 
most  frequent  of  all  exciting  causes  of  cholera  is,  going  to  bed 
too  soon  after  a  hearty  meal,  whether  it  be  a  late  dinner,  or 
merely  a  supper  of  fruits  and  cream  or  milk,  with  sugar.  I 
think  that  eating  freely  of  fruits  or  berries,  ripe,  raw,  and 
perfect,  with  any  fluid  after  them,  and  then  going  to  bed  in 
an  hour  or  two,  will  excite  cholera  in  cholera  times.  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  huckleberries,  with  cream  or  milk, 
except  in  very  small  quantity,  make  a  dangerous  dish  iu 
cholera  times. 

It  may  subserve  a  good  purpose  to  remark  that  I  have 
written  on  this  subject,  not  to  support  a  theory,  but  to  draw 
attention  to  the  suggestions,  and,  least  of  all,  to  obtain  a 
cholera  practice.  I  never  treated  a  cholera  case  except  gra- 
tuitously. I  do  not  visit  persons  out  of  my  office,  except  in 
rare  cases.  I  prescribe  only  for  those  who  come  to  see  me, 
and  who  write  to  me ;  and  my  practice  is  closely  confined  to 
ailments  of  the  throat  and  lungs,  and  has  been  for  ten  or 
fifteen  years. 

I  will  close  the  subject  by  answering  an  inquiry  which,  no 
doubt,  has  occurred  to  the  reader  as  a  conclusive  refutation 
of  all  that  I  have  said  as  to  the  fundamental  cause  of  cholera, 
to  wit :  — 

If  cholera  is  the  result  of  heat,  moisture,  and  vegetable 
matter  in  combination,  why  has  it  not  prevailed  from  time 
immemorial  ?  Because  the  climates  of  the  world,  and  of  the 
various  countries  of  the  earth,  the  constitutions,  and  habits 
of  life,  and  modes  of  living,  are  constantly  changing ;  hence 
new  diseases  are  making  their  appearance  from  time  to  time, 
while  others  have  vanished  from  the  world.  And  when  a 
single  element  of  many  is  changed,  an  entire  new  combination 
may  be  the  result.  But  whatever  may  be  that  new,  or  changed, 
element,  it  can  no  more,  us  far  as  our  present  knowledge  ex- 
tends, excite  epidemic  cholera,  without  the  aid  of  vegetable 
decomposition,  than  powder  can  be  ignited  without  the  aid  of 
fire. 

CONCLUDING    OBSERVATIONS. 

While  cholera  prevails,  no  marked  change  should  be  made 
as  to  the  general  habits  of  a  regular  temperate  life,  as  long  as 
the  person  feels  entirely  well ;  but  the  moment  the  great  prc- 


WHAT  IS   CHOLERA?  105 

monitory  sj'mptom  is  observed,  even  in  a  slight  degree,  to 
wit.  an  indefinable  uncomforlableness  in  the  belly ,  inclining 
to  rest,  then  an  instantaneous  change  should  be  made  from 
physical  activity  to  bodily  rest ;  from  mental  activity  to  men- 
tal relaxation ;  from  the  habitual  use  of  wines,  or  malt,  or 
other  alcoholic  drinks,  to  total  abstinence,  — from  everything 
of  the  kind,  using  ice  or  ice- water  as  a  substitute,  or  cold 
spring  water,  a  few  swallows  only  in  any  twenty  minutes ; 
but  if  ice  is  to  be  had,  and  there  is  thirst,  it  may  be  eaten 
continuously  from  morning  until  night. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  diet  before,  it  should  be 
changed  at  once  to  tea  and  toast,  or  cold  bread  and  butter, 
with  plain  meat,  salted  or  fresh,  whichever  is  relished  most. 
I  mean  that  these  changes  should  be  made  on  the  first  appear- 
ance of  belly-uncomfortableness ;  and  if  in  six  or  eight  hours 
you  are  not  decidedly  better,  send  for  a  physician ;  if  you  are 
better,  continue  your  own  treatment  until  the  feeling  in  the 
belly  has  entirely  disappeared,  and  you  have  a  desire  to  walk 
about,  and  experience  a  decided  relief  in  doing  so. 

If  you  have  over  two  (or  three  at  most)  passages  within 
twenty-four  hours,  do  not  make  an  experiment  on  your  life 
by  taking  even  a  calomel  pill,  simple  as  it  is,  unless  it  be 
wholly  impracticable  to  obtain  a  physician  within  three  or 
four  hours. 

DIET   IN   CHOLERA   TIMES. 

If  you  have  no  especial  liking  for  one  thing  more  than 
another,  and  have  not  even  the  premonitory  symptom,  to  wit, 
the  belly-uneasiness,  then  the  following  diet  will  render  you 
more  secure  :  — 

Breakfast.  —  A  single  cup  of  weak  coffee  or  tea,  with 
toasted  bread,  or  cold  bread  and  butter,  and  a  small  piece 
of  salt  meat,  ham,  beef,  fish,  or  the  like,  and  nothing  else. 

Dinner.  —  Cold  bread,  roasted  or  broiled  fresh  meat  of 
some  kind,  potatoes,  rice,  hominy,  samp,  or  thickened  gruel. 

For  Dessert.  —  Rice,  or  bread-pudding,  or  sago,  arrow- 
root, tapioca,  farina,  corn-starch,  prepared  in  the  usual  man- 
ner, and  nothing  else,  fluid  or  solid. 

Tea,  or  Supper.  —  A  single  cup  of  weak  tea  of  some  kind, 
or  coffee,  with  cold  bread  and  butter,  —  nothing  else. 

Eat  nothing  between  meals  ;  go  to  bed  at  a  regular  hour,  — 


106  OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK. 

not  later  than  ten  o'clock ;  attend  to  your  business  with  great 
moderation,  avoiding  hurry,  bustle,  worrimeut  of  mind;  wear 
thin  woollen  flannel  next  the  body,  during  the  day,  — air  it  well 
at  night,  sleeping  in  a  common  cotton  night-garment ;  remain 
in  bed  of  mornings,  after  you  have  waked  up,  until  you  feel 
rested  in  all  your  limbs ;  but  do  not,  by  any  means,  take  a 
second  nap.  Do  not  sleep  a  moment  in  the  day  time,  and  let 
all  your  enjoyments  and  recreations  be  in  great  moderation. 

Fruits  have  not  been  named,  because  it  is  so  difficult  to  get 
them  fresh,  ripe,  perfect,  —  many  looking  so,  are  wormy. 
Except  potatoes,  no  vegetables  are  named,  because  they  more 
readily  sour  on  the  stomach,  require  more  power  of  digestion, 
while  they  do  not  afford  as  much  nutriment  and  strength  to 
the  body  in  proportion. 


OUR  FOOD   AND  DRINK. 

IT  is  worth  the  effort  of  a  life-time  to  be  able  to  die  well,  — 
to  die  without  pain,  and  in  a  well-grounded  hope  of  happiness 
beyond.  To  die  without  pain,  we  must  live  in  health,  and 
live  a  long  time.  As  a  very  general  rule,  those  who  live  to 
great  age  pass  away  without  apparently  suffering,  as  if  they 
were  going  to  sleep.  The  great  secret  of  a  long  and  health- 
ful life  lies  in  the  judicious  use  of  what  we  eat  and  drink. 
What  is  judicious  we  propose  to  discuss ;  but  not  in  such  a 
way  as  to  dictate  dogmatically  what  this  or  that  one  shall  use, 
but  to  let  each  one  decide  for  himself,  under  the  guidance  of 
a  few  general  principles,  founded  on  observed  facts,  not  on 
imagined  fallacies. 

On  the  6th  day  of  June,  1822,  a  robust,  hearty  French 
Canadian,  of  eighteen  years,  was  accidentally  shot  in  the  left 
side.  The  wound  healed,  but  left  an  opening  in  the  stomach, 
which  allowed  the  physician  to  see,  at  any  time,  what  was 
passing  inside ;  and  for  the  space  of  fifteen  years,  a  great 
variety  of  experiments  were  made,  and  observations  taken ; 
and  in  the  light  of  these  we  make  our  way. 

In  clear,  cool,  dry  weather,  a  thermometer,  introduced  into 
the  stomach,  settled  at  one  hundred  degrees,  Fahrenheit.  In 


OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK.  107 

raw,  damp,  cloudy  weather,  it  remained  stationary  at  ninety- 
four. 

One  point  gained,  then,  is,  that  the  temperature  of  an 
empty  and  healthy  stomach,  in  good  weather,  is  about  one 
hundred  degrees. 

Soon  after  a  meal  is  eaten,  the  temperature  of  the  stomach 
is  slightly  increased,  digestion  goes  on  healthily  and  well, 
and,  in  four  or  five  hours,  the  stomach  is  empty  again.  By 
digestion  here  we  mean,  that  what  was  eaten,  whether  meat, 
bread,  vegetables,  or  other  food,  is  gradually  changed,  until 
it  becomes  whitish,  and  thinnish,  and  sweetish,  like  milk.  It 
matters  not  what  we  eat,  or  of  how  many  different  kinds,  it 
is  the  same  in  color,  taste,  and  consistence  ;•  that  is,  when 
digestion  is  healthy.  When  digestion  is  not  perfect,  the  food 
ferments,  becomes  sour,  rises  in  the  mouth,  generates  wind, 
causes  belching,  and  the  like  familiar  symptoms.  Digestion, 
being  a  process  of  nature,  whatever  arrests  digestion  is  a 
direct  interference  with  nature,  always  does  wrong,  and,  if 
persevered  in,  destroys  health  and  life,  inevitably. 

It  was  further  observed,  that  cold  water,  swallowed  during 
the  process  of  digestion,  instantly  arrested  it ;  and  the  process 
was  not  resumed,  until  the  water  had  been  there  long  enough 
to  be  warmed  from  the  temperature  at  which  it  was  drank,  to 
that  of  the  stomach,  or  from  some  forty  degrees  to  a  hun- 
dred. To  accomplish  this,  the  heat  must  be  abstracted  from 
the  general  system,  chilling  it.  Strong,  robust  persons  may 
not  feel  this ;  but  if  a  man  in  feeble  health  drink  cold  water 
at  a  meal,  at  all  largely,  he  rises  from  the  table  chilly,  and  soon 
has  fever ;  while  the  stomach,  being  kept  that  much  longer  at 
work  in  digesting  the  food,  loses  its  vigor,  the  digestion  is 
imperfect,  and  the  food  becomes  impure,  thus  laying  the 
foundation  of  disease.  The  inevitable  inference  from  these 
facts  is,  that 

COLD   WATER   IS    INJURIOUS   TO   HEALTH, 

if  taken  at  meals.  Injurious  to  the  most  robust,  if  taken 
largely ;  and  to  persons  in  feeble  health,  if  taken  at  all,  be- 
yond a  few  swallows,  at  a  meal. 

I  therefore  set  it  down,  as  a  clearly  established  fact,  that  a 
glass  or  more  of  cold  water,  drank  habitually  at  meals,  or  soon 
after,  is  a  pernicious  practice,  even  to  the  most  healthy. 


108  OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK. 

Injury  is  done  in  another  manner,  —  water,  or  any  other 
fluid,  dilutes  the  gastric  juice,  and  thus  weakens  its  power 
to  dissolve  the  food.  The  amount  of  gastric  juice  is  not 
lessened,  but  its  power  is  diminished,  by  its  dilution.  The 
finger  will  be  scalded  by  dipping  it  into  a  vessel  of  boiling 
water ;  but  if  an  equal  amount  of  cold  water  is  added,  it  may 
be  thrust  in  with  impunity,  although  there  is  as  much  heat  in 
the  mass  as  before  ;  but  it  is  more  diffused.  A  glass  of  brandy 
will  almost  strangle  a  person  not  accustomed  to  it ;  but  if 
largely  diluted,  it  gives  no  discomfort,  although  all  the  brandy 
is  there  that  was  there  before.  We  have,  then,  made  another 
advance,  that  any  kind  of  fluid  largely  taken  at  a  meal,  or 
soon  after,  is  positively  injurious  to  health. 

"  Largely  "  is  a  relative  term.  An  advance  of  fifty  per  cent, 
in  the  price  of  anything  is  large;  and  when  it  is  remembered 
that  but  a  few  table-spoonfuls  of  gastric  juice  are  furnished  at 
a  meal,  a  glass  of  cold  water,  or  two  or  three  cups  of  coffee  or 
tea,  is  a  large  amount  of  fluid  for  one  meal.  Thus,  a  standing 
item  of  advice  to  my  patients  is,  —  Take  but  half  a  glass  of 
water  at  a  single  meal,  or  a  single  cup  of  weak  coffee  or  tea, 
never  increasing  the  strength  or  quantity,  and  drink  nothing 
within  an  hour  after  eating. 

If  cold  drinks  are  injurious  at  meals,  cold  food,  is  for  the 
same  reason,  also  injurious ;  thus  it  is  that  some  of  the  most 
terrible  forms  of  disease  are  brought  on  by  persistence  in  eat- 
ing cold  food,  exclusively,  especially  in  winter  time.  If  cold 
fluids  are  injurious  at  meals,  we  naturally  conclude  that  warm 
fluids,  in  moderation,  are  beneficial ;  and  rightly  so.  The 
young  of  the  animal  creation  are  furnished  with  sustenance 
warmed  by  Nature ;  and  the  choice  morsel  is  warmed  in  the 
beak  of  the  parent  bird,  before  arriving  at  the  nest  of  her 
young.  We  instinctively,  almost,  prepare  something  warm 
for  the  weary  or  the  invalid ;  hence  the  virtue  oftentimes 
ascribed  to  drinking  milk,  warm  from  the  cow,  —  not  a  very 
palatable  idea,  it  must  be  confessed.  It  then  follows,  that, 
if  we  drink  anything  at  meals,  it  should  be  first  warmed. 

We  may  safely  admit,  that  the  universal  custom  of  a  coun- 
try is  founded  on  common  sense,  common  sense  being  the 
teachings  of  experience.  Common  consent  and  the  experi- 
ence of  the  civilized  world  is,  that  a  cup  of  good  hot  coffee 


OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK.  109 

for  breakfast,  and  a  cup  of  good  hot  tea  for  supper,  is  "  whole- 
some." If  a  person  is  prejudiced  against  "store  tea  and 
coffee,"  then  any  of  our  common  garden  herbs  may  be  sub- 
stituted, as  balm,  sage,  sassafras,  and  the  like.  It  is  the 
loarmth  that  comes  first  in  importance ;  and  there  must  be  the 
taste  of  something  palatable  in  it,  or  the  stomach  will  loathe 
it.  I  am  well  aware  that  some  persons  consider  tea  and  coffee 
poisonous,  as  did  an  enthusiastic  young  "theological"  at  New 
Brunswick,  a  few  years  ago ;  and  demonstrated  it,  as  he 
thought,  to  the  old  dominie,  then  in  his  eighty-sixth  year, 
and  still  an  efficient  laborer  in  the  vineyard.  "It  may  be  a 
poison,  as  you  say,"  replied  the  old  veteran,  as  the  sly  mis- 
chief twinkled  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye,  "  but  it  must  be 
a  very  slow  poison ;  for  I  hav§  taken  it  regularly,  night  and 
morning,  for  these  eighty  years,  and  am,  as  you  see,  not  dead 
yet.'*  The  same  has  been  said  of  Dr.  Johnson. 

But  how  comes  it  that  so  many  sensible  people  believe  that 
tea  and  coffee  are  poisonous  ?  Just  as  they  have  come  to  the 
adoption  of  any  other  fallacy.  Somebody,  who  had  nothing 
else  to  do,  imagined  it,  then  hunted  up  facts  and  parts  of 
facts  to  prove  it ;  and  what  with  adding  a  little  to  one  fact, 
and  suppressing  from  another,  a  really  plausible  case  was 
made  out  to  every  reader  or  hearer  who  had  rather  admit  a 
statement  then  take  the  trouble  thoroughly  to  sift  its  truth, 
and  there  are  many  such. 

"  Once  upon  a  time/'  a  party  of  men  left  Salt  Lake 
City  for  St.  Louis,  with  the  United  States  mail,  to  bo 
delivered  at  Independence  or,  *St.  Jo\  It  was  winter.  They 
found  the  prairies  covered  with  snow,  and  finally  their  'ani- 
mals '  perished  with  hunger ;  at  this  stage  the  six  men  found 
themselves  utterly  destitute  of  any  kind  of  food ;  the  game 
had  taken  to  the  woods,  there  were  no  rivers,  and  they 
were  still  hundreds  of  miles  from  their  journey's  end,  while 
the  bleak  winter  winds  whistling  across  the  wide  prairies  in 
unobstructed  fury,  froze  them  sometimes  almost  to  the  heart's 
core.  All,  absolutely  all  they  had  to  subsist  upon  under 
these  desperate  circumstances,  was  snow-water  and  a  quantity 
of  green  coffee ;  this  they  burned  and  boiled  in  snow  water, 
and  upon  it  travelled  for  six  days,  until  they  reached  a  place 
of  help."  Those  are  the  bare  facts  of  the  case,  as  reported  to 


110  OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK. 

government,  and  demonstrate  that  coffee,  alone,  is  a  suste- 
nant,  as  well  as  a  stimulant,  that  it  contains  the  element*  of 
nutrition,  consequently  is  not  a  mere  stimulant,  and  all  that 
has  been  said  of  "  mere  stimulants,"  is  not  applicable  to  it. 
Coffee,  then,  being  of  itself  nutritious,  capable  of  sustaining 
life  for  days  at  a  time,  under  circumstances  of  severe  cold 
and  the  labor  of  travelling  on  foot,  and  it  being  customary  to 
use  it  with  cream  and  sugar,  which  are  themselves  concentrat- 
ed nutriments,  and  withal,  being  drank  hot,  the  conclusion 
appears  to  us  as  legitimate  as  one  of  Euclid's  corollaries,  that 
coffee,  as  generally  used  in  this  country,  is  a  valuable,  nutri- 
tious, healthful,  and  comfortable  item. 

Chemical  analysis,  has  of  late,  under  the  direction  of  the 
most  competent  and  intelligent  minds  of  the  age,  arrived  at 
the  point  just  stated,  and  declares  that  coffee  is  a  nutriment, 
and  that  its  essential  principle,  although  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  per  cent,  less,  is  identical  with  that  of  the  tea  of 
commerce ;  and  when  facts,  universal  custom,  and  science,  all 
unite  in  one  point,  surely  we  may  feel  safe,  and  hereafter  take 
our  cup  of  coffee  and  tea  "  in  peace  and  quietness." 

The  first  cup  of  coffee  is  the  best. 

The  last  cup  of  tea  is  the  best. 

Never  take  more  than  one  cup  at  a  meal. 

Never  increase  the  strength. 

If  it  were  a  mere  stimulant,  then,  after  a  while,  it  might, 
if  not  increased  in  strength  or  quantity,  produce  no  sensible 
effect,  might  do  no  good,  .-is  brandy,  opium,  or  any  other 
mere  stimulant ;  but  as  tea  and  coffee  are  nutritious,  the  more 
so  as  they  are  used  with  milk  and  sugar,  a  cup  of  the  "  self- 
same "  is  likely  to  do  you  as  much  good  and  as  little  harm 
twenty  years  hence  as  to-day. 

It  has  been  justly  said  that,  "In  the  life  of  most  persons,  a 
period  arrives  when  the  stomach  no  longer  digests  enough  of 
the  ordinary  elements  of  food  to  make  up  for  the  natural  daily 
waste  of  the  bodily  substance.  The  size  and  weight  of  the 
body,  therefore,  begin  to  diminish  more  or  less  perceptibly. 
At  this  period  tea  comes  in  as  a  medicine  to  arrest  the  waste, 
to  keep  the  body  from  falling  away  so  fast,  and  thus  enable 
the  less  energetic  powers  of  digestion  still  to  supply  as  much 
as  is  needed  to  repair  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  solid  tissues. 


OUR  FOOD  AND  DRINK.  Ill 

v 

No  wonder,  therefore,  that  tea  should  be  a  favorite,  on  the 
one  hand,  with  the  poor,  whose  supply  of  substantial  food  is 
scant}',  and  on  the  other,  with  the  aged  and  infirm,  especially 
of  the  feebler  sex,  whose  powers  of  digestion,  and  whose 
bodily  substance  have  together  begun  to  fail.  Nor  is  it  sur- 
prising that  the  aged  female,  who  has  barely  enough  of  week- 
ly income  to  buy  what  are  called  the  common  necessaries  of 
life,  should  yet  spend  a  portion  of  her  small  gains  in  purchas- 
ing her  ounce  of  tea.  She  can  live  quite  as  well  on  less  com- 
mon food  when  she  takes  her  tea  along  with  it ;  while  she 
feels  lighter,  at  the  same  time  more  cheerful  and  fitter  for 
her  work,  because  of  the  indulgence. 

The  use  of  tea  became  general  in  China  about  the  year  six 
hundred,  A.  D.,  and  after  a  dozen  hundred  years'  use,  they 
seem  to  live  as  long  as  the  Anglo-Saxons  do,  with  whom,  a 
thousand  years  later,  it  was  so  costly,  that  the  East  India 
Company  considered  the  present  of  two  pounds  of  it  to  the 
Queen  of  England,  a  rare  gift ;  and  now  the  average  length 
of  life  in  Great  Britain  is  greater  than  when  that  present  was 
made,  although  the  inhabitants  consume  fifty-five  million 
pounds  of  tea  every  year. 

The  effect  of  tea  is  to  enliven ;  it  produces  a  comfortable 
exhilaration  of  spirits,  it  wakens  up  aud  increases  the  work- 
ing capabilities  of  the  brain,  and  brings  out  the  kindlier  feel- 
ings of  our  nature  in  moderation,  having  them  always  under 
our  control.  Alcohol,  in  any  of  its  combinations,  intoxi- 
cates, makes  wild,  places  a  man  out  of  his  own  power;  he 
gets  beside  himself,  he  can't  control  himself,  nor  can  any  one 
else  control  him,  except  by  brute  force.  Upon  some  persons 
it  has  the  effect  of  eliciting  the  darkest  and  deadliest  passions 
of  our  nature.  Who  ever  heard  of  a  cup  of  tea  inciting  its 
sippers  to  "treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils?"  In  certain 
irritated  states  of  the  body,  it  soothes  the  whole  system, 
allays  inflammation,  cools  fever,  modifies  the  circulation,  aud 
counteracts  the  stupor  of  opium  and  brandy. 


112  EFFECTS   OF  IMAGINATION  ON  HEALTH. 


EFFECTS   OF  IMAGINATION  ON  HEALTH. 

WHAT  is  the  nature  of  that  mysterious  bond  of  connection 
between  mind  and  body  we  may  never  know,  but  the  notice 
of  the  effects  is  sometimes  interesting,  startling,  awful,  as 
will  be  subsequently  shown  by  well  attested  facts.  The  gen- 
eral lesson  which  I  wish  to  inculcate,  because  of  its  beariug 
on  the  health  and  happiness  of  men,  is  the  importance  practi- 
cally, of  keeping  the  mind  constantly  employed  in  something 
useful  and  agreeable.  One  of  the  great  secrets  of  human 
happiness  is  to  be  profitably  busy.  Of  all  men  they  are  the 
most  miserable,  who  have  nothing  to  do  ;  and  yet,  as  far  as 
my  observation  has  extended,  those  who  have  nothing  to  do, 
never  have  time  to  do  anything.  The  mechanic  who  is  fully 
employed,  is  the  very  man  to  perform  a  job  for  you  punctu- 
ally. When  nothing  presses  on  the  attention,  the  mind  is 
prone  to  dwell  on  small  things  ;  and  strangely  too,  these 
small  things  are,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  among  the  disagreea- 
bles. The  absence  of  a  neighborly  nod  from  an  acquaintance 
or  fellow-citizen,  who  never  failed  to  nod  before,  instantly 
sets  a  "  nothing-to-do "  to  work ;  his  whole  soul  is  full  of 
business  ;  so  much  so,  that  he  can  think  of  nothing  else  :  the 
mind  is  tumultuously  tossing,  and  all  creation  is  veiled  in  a 
hurting  gloom.  There  is  no  stopping  to  inquire  whether  the 
offending  one  is  near-sighted  ;  whether  he  is  not  going  for  the 
doctor,  or  worse  than  that,  "shinning  it"  among  his  business 
friends  to  meet  a  note  in  bank.  Mr.  Nothing-To-Do  gets 
hold  of  a  fact,  or  story,  or  occurrence,  and  by  its  help  he 
imagines  a  great  wrong  has  been  done  him  ;  he  pores  over  it, 
be  cherishes  it  most  pertinaciously,  he  even  wakes  up  in  the 
night  and  thinks  about  it,  until  the  mind  itself  is  fully  roused, 
and  he  cannot  go  to  sleep  again.  The  more  he  thinks  the 
more  sleepless  he  becomes,  and  tosses  and  tumbles  about  on 
the  bed  by  the  hour ;  and  as  the  mind  becomes  hotter,  the 
body  begins  to  sweat,  and  he  gets  up  in  the  morning  as  hag- 
gard and  weary  as  an  exhausted  madman. 

It  is  a  well  known  fact  among  medical  men,  that  a  young 
student  of  physic  will  have  a  dozen  different  diseases  in  the 


EFFECTS   OF  IMAGINATION  ON  HEALTH.  113 

first  year  of  his  novitiate.  Dr.  Reese  says,  w  It  would  seem 
as  if  the  study  of  certain  diseases  sometimes  favored  their 
real  or  imaginary  development.  (The  great  Lsennec,  who 
spent  a  large  portion  of  his  life  in  the  study  of  consumption, 
fell  a  victim  to  it  himself.  So  did  Wooster,  of  Cincinnati, 
and  Hastings,  of  London,  who  set  the  world  agog  on  the  use 
of  Naphtha  as  a  certain  cure  for  Phthisis,  and  yet  he  failed  to 
cure  himself  of  it.)  Corvisart  made  disease  of  the  heart  his 
study,  and  died  of  it.  When  the  celebrated  Professor  Frank 
of  Paria  was  preparing  his  lectures  on  diseases  of  the  heart, 
his  own  became  so  much  disturbed  that  he  was  obliged  to  rest 
for  a  while.  Men  and  women  have  often  come  to  me  for  the 
treatment  of  consumption,  when,  on  examination,  the  lungs 
were  found  to  be  as  sound  and  full  acting  as  the  lungs  of  a 
race-horse,  as  was  usually  proved  by  subsequent  perma- 
nent recovery ;  a  slight  thinness  in  flesh,  or  pain  in  the 
breast,  or  troublesome  cough,  from  a  disordered  stomach  or 
liver,  or  diseased  spine,  having  been  magnified  to  mean  that 
they  were  falling  into  a  fatal  disease.  Alas,  how  often  are 
these  imaginings  taken  advantage  of  by  wicked  men,  who 
have  only  assumed  to  be  physicians,  and  subsequent  restora- 
tion is  blazoned  abroad,  and  certified  to,  in  the  newspapers,  as 
"  cures  of  consumption,"  when  the  consumption  never  existed, 
but  in  the  imagination  of  a  "  nothing -to-do ."  I  often  feel,  in 
reference  to  a  patient,  —  You  arc  too  rich  to  get  well ;  if  you 
had  to  take  in  washing  at  fifty  cents  a  dozen,  or  had  a  house 
full  of  children  "to  do  for,"  and  no  servants  to  help,  with  a 
sick  husband  to  boot,  you  would  soon  be  well  enough.  Let 
the  reader  remember,  then,  "a  symptom  is  the  very  last  thing 
you  should  think  about." 

It  is  related  of  a  prime  minister,  that  to  prove  to  his  king- 
that  actual  bodily  suffering  was  less  destructive  in  its  influ- 
ences than  imagined  danger,  he  took  two  lambs,  broke  the 
leg  of  one,  placed  it  in  an  enclosure  with  food  beside  it,  and 
left  it ;  the  other,  with  food  beside  it,  was  placed  in  another 
enclosure,  in  which  was  a  tiger,  so  confined  that  he  could 
spring  near  to  the  lamb,  but  could  not  possibly  touch  it. 
Next  morning,  the  wounded  lamb  had  eaten  all  its  food, 
while  that  of  the  other  was  untouched,  and  the  lamb  itself 
was  dead. 


114  EFFECTS   OF  IMAGINATION  ON  HEALTH. 

Dr.  Noble,  in  an  analytic  lecture  at  Manchester,  "  On  the 
Dynamic  Influence  of  Ideas,"  told  an  anecdote  of  M.  Bouti- 
bouse,  a  French  philosopher,  in  illustration  of  the  power  of 
imagination.  M.  Boutibouse  served  in  Napoleon's  army,  and 
was  present  at  many  engagements  during  the  early  part  of 
the  present  century.  At  the  battle  of  Wagram,  in  1809,  he  was 
engaged  in  the  fray ;  the  ranks  around  him  had  been  terribly 
thinned  by  shot,  and  at  sunset  he  was  nearly  isolated.  While 
reloading  his  musket,  he  was  shot  down  by  a  cannon  ball. 
His  impression  was  that  the  ball  had  passed  through  his  legs 
below  his  knees,  separating  them  from  the  thighs  ;  for  he  sud- 
denly sank  down,  shortened,  as  he  believed,  to  the  extent  of 
about  a  foot  in  measurement.  The  trunk  of  the  body  fell 
backwards  on  the  ground,  and  the  senses  were  completely 
paralyzed  by  the  shock.  Thus  he  lay  motionless  amongst  the 
wounded  and  dead  during  the  rest  of  the  night,  not  daring  to 
move  a  muscle,  lest  the  loss  of  blood  should  be  fatally  in- 
creased. He  felt  no  pain,  but  this  he  attributed  to  the  stunn- 
ing effect  of  the  shock  to  the  brain  and  nervous  system.  At 
early  dawn  he  was  roused  by  one  of  the  medical  staff,  who 
came  round  to  help  the  wounded.  "  What's  the  matter  with 
you,  my  good  fellow?"  said  the  surgeon.  "Ah,  touch  me 
tenderly,"  replied  M.  Boutibouse,  "I  beseech  you  ;  a  cannon 
ball  has  carried  off  my  legs."  The  surgeon  examined  the 
limbs  referred  to,  and  then  giving  him  a  good  shake,  said, 
with  a  joyous  laugh,  "Get  up  with  you,  you  have  nothing 
the  matter  with  you."  M.  Boutibouse  immediately  sprang 
up  in  utter  astonishment,  and  stood  firmly  on  the  legs  which 
he  thought  he  had  lost  forever.  "  I  felt  more  thankful,"  said 
M.  Boutibouse, "than  I  had  ever  done  in  the  whole  course  of 
my  life  before.  I  had  not  a  wound  about  me.  I  had,  indeed, 
been  shot  down  by  an  immense  cannon  ball ;  but  instead  of 
passing  through  the  legs,  as  I  firmly  believed  it  had,  the  ball 
had  passed  under  my  feet,  and  had  ploughed  a  hole  in  the 
earth  beneath,  at  least  a  foot  in  depth,  into  which  my  feet 
suddenly  sank,  giving  me  the  idea  that  I  had  been  thus  short- 
ened by  the  loss  of  my  legs."  The  truth  of  this  story  is 
vouched  for  by  Dr.  Noble. 

A  St.  Louis  gentleman,  who  had  a  slight  affection  of  the 
head  several  weeks,  became  alarmed  a  few  days  since,  and 


EFFECTS   OF  IMAGINATION  ON  HEALTH.  115 

took  the  matter  so  much  at  heart,  that  he  fully  persuaded 
himself  that  his  head  was  growing  unusually  large.  It  became 
a  settled  conviction  in  his  own  mind  that  it  was  absolutely 
swelling.  A  few  nights  since,  after  taking  his  wife  to  church, 
he  hud  occasion  to  leave  and  attend  a  meeting  of  an  associa- 
tion to  which  he  belonged.  He  was  very  uneasy  while  there, 
occasionally  feeling  his  head,  and  finally  bolted  again  to  the 
church,  to  get  his  wife,  and  go  immediately  home.  In  the 
hurry  of  leaving,  he  picked  up  another  man's  hat,  vastly  too 
small  for  him,  and  in  full  run,  clapped  it  on  his  head.  What 
was  his  horror  to  find  that  it  wouldn't  begin  to  fit !  In  vain 
he  tried  to  press  it  over  his  aching  brow,  but  the  beaver 
wouldn't  yield  a  particle.  This  only  strengthened  his  convic- 
tion in  relation  to  his  growing  head,  and  with  the  utmost 
speed  he  gained  the  church  just  as  it  was  breaking  up  and  the 
people  retiring.  The  congregation  were  amazed  at  his  ab- 
sent manner  in  calling  for  his  wife  and  then  a  doctor. 

('  What  is  the  matter?  "  said  one. 

"  O,  matter  enough !  My  head  is  getting  as  large  as  a 
court-house  door :  a  doctor  —  quick  ! " 

In  a  few  minutes  a  physician  who  was  present  came  for- 
ward, but  could  not  satisfy  him  that  his  head  had  no  extra 
bulk.  He  finally  prescribed  free  bleeding  and  cupping  on 
the  back  of  his  neck.  The  patient  and  his  wife  started  home, 
and  called,  on  the  way,  on  a  cupper  and  leecher,  to  get  his 
assistance  in  the  matter.  Just  as  the  man  of  cups  was  about 
to  commence  operations,  the  lady  observed  that  her  husband 
had  a  strange  hat,  and  immediately  informed  him  of  the  fact. 
He  looked  at  it  carefully  for  a  moment,  and  his  strange  fancy 
of  a  swelled  head  seemed  to  give  way  under  the  disclosure, 
and  at  once  he  dispensed  with  the  bloody  preparations  to 
reduce  it. 

Not  only  the  body,  but  the  mind  and  the  heart,  become 
diseased  by  giving  loose  to  the  imagination ;  in  this  very  way 
was  it,  that  men  were  once  led  into  heathenism.  Paul  states, 
in  the  first  chapter  of  Romans,  that  the  world  "became  vain 
in  their  imaginations,  and  their  foolish  heart  was  darkened," 
that  is,  I  presume,  their  judgment  was  blinded.  The  reader 
will  also  see,  I  trust,  the  beautiful  appropriateness  of  Scripture 
language,  so  often  repeated  as  a  caution  against  "vain 


116  HEALTH,   WEALTH,  AND  RELIGION. 

thoughts,"  groundless,  without  reason :  these  vain  imagina- 
tions lead  to  moral  and  physical  death,  and  ought  to  be  striven 
against  as  a  religious  duty 


DYSPEPSIA  AND  VINEGAR. 

As  soon  as  food  reaches  the  stomach  of  a  hungry,  healthy 
man,  it  pours  out  a  fluid  substance,  called  gastric  juice,  as 
instantly  as  thp  eye  yields  water,  if  it  is  touched  by  anything 
hard  ;  this  gastric  dissolves  the  food  from  without  inwards,  as 
lumps  of  ice  in  a  glass  of  water  are  melted  from  without  in- 
wards. If,  from  any  cause,  the  food  is  not  thus  melted  or  dis- 
solved, that  is  indigestion,  or  dyspepsia.  Vinegar,  in  its 
action  on  food,  is  more  nearly  like  the  gastric  juice  than  any 
other  fluid  known ;  thus  it  is  that  a  pickle,  or  a  little  vinegar 
will  "  settle  the  stomach,"  when  some  discomfort  is  experienced 
after  eating. 


HEALTH,   WEALTH,   AND  RELIGION. 

THESE  are  the  three  grand  duties  of  life.     Each  additional 

o 

year  confirms  me  in  the  opinion  that  pulpit  teachings  in  refer- 
ence to  money  are  erroneous,  mischievous,  and  inconsistent. 
The  vanity  of  riches,  that  silver  and  gold  arc  dross,  that  wealth 
is  a  snare,  that  it  is  hard  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  heaven,  these 
are  stereotyped  themes,  and  afford  scope  for  a  beautiful  dis- 
play of  words  and  imagination. 

If  money  is  indeed  so  trashy,  if  its  pursuit  perils  a  man's 
soul,  why  is  it  that  in  some  cases  we  never  go  to  church  on 
the  Sabbath  day  without  having  a  silver  plate  handed  round, 
that  tells  plainly  enough  whether  the  giver  throws  in  a  copper 
cent  or  a  silver  dollar,  thus  shaming  the  humble  poor,  and 
tempting  the  ostentatious  to  go  beyond  their  means  ?  We  thus 
give  the  lie  to  our  teachings,  and  more  than  this,  we  prac- 
tically ignore  the  expressive  teachings  of  Scripture,  that  we 
must  not  let  the  left  hand  know  what  the  right  hand  doeth. 


HEALTH,  WEALTH,  AND  EEL  10 ION.        117 

I  will  leave  it  to  the  reflective  man  of  wealth,  who  is  yet 
among  the  world's  people,  if  he  does  not  often  turn  away 
with  a  feeling  of  eontemptuousness  at  theory  and  practice  so 
mal  aprnpos. 

At  one  moment  we  are  told  that  wealth  is  a  canker ;  how 
unavailing  to  procure  happiness ;  the  next  we  are  reminded 
of  how  blessed  a  thing  it  is  to  give,  and  what  a  large  good 
may  be  done  in  the  judicious  use  of  a  small  amount  of  money. 
These  inconsistencies  perplex  the  "  feeble  folk,"  and  confuse 
the  lambs  of  the  flock,  for  whom  we  ought  specially  to  care. 
Men  of  New  York,  and  Philadelphia,  and  Boston,  and  of  the 
thousands  of  smaller  cities  and  towns  of  this  broad  land, 
whether  money  be  a  hindrance  against  entering  heaven  or  not, 
judge  ye ;  but  this  I  know,  its  possession  here  is  necessary  to 
a  seat  near  God's  altar.  We  cannot  sit  under  the  droppings  of 
the  sanctuary  if  we  are  not  rich,  at  least  comparatively.  It  is 
notorious  that  the  radical,  the  distinctive  principles  of  primi- 
tive Christianity,  are  reversed  among  us.  In  early  times, 
when  the  love  of  a  recently  ascended  Saviour  burned  within 
the  hearts  of  his  followers,  it  was  heralded  abroad  as  some- 
thing singular  and  almost  miraculous,  that  "  The  poor  have 
the  gospel  preached  to  them" 

Such  is  not  the  case  in  New  York.  Here  we  must  give  a 
thousand  dollars  for  a  pew  holding  five  persons,  and,  in  addi- 
tion to  that  thousand,  we  must  pay  seven  per  cent,  every 
year  for  church  expenses.  In  our  Fifth  Avenue  Church, 
there  is  not  a  pew,  or  even  single  sitting,  to  be  had.  This  is 
largely  complimentary  to  our  minister,  one  of  the  best  of  men, 
and  of  commanding  talents ;  yet  this  is  the  very  kind  of  man 
needed  for  the  poor,  for  it  requires  all  his  piety  to  stoop  so 
low  as  to  wash  their  feet,  and  all  his  talents  to  make  the  hid- 
den things  of  the  Bible  plain  to  their  uncultivated  minds.  But 
the  rich  bid  the  highest,  and  the  poor  must  put  up  with  any 
crumbs  they  may  get  from  the  tables  of  their  richer  brethren 
in  the  way  of  standing  room  in  the  vestibule,  or  gallery,  or  an 
occasional  vacant  seat  on  rainy  days,  or  very  dusty,  or  very 
warm,  or  very  windy,  or  very  cold,  or  in  the  dog-days,  when 
it  is  not  fashionable  to  be  seen  in  town :  in  this  last  case,  in- 
deed, there  is  plenty  of  room  ;  but  the  voice  of  that  pious  and 
talented  man  is  not  there  to  instruct  by  "thoughts  that  breathe 


118  HEALTH,  WEALTH,  AND  RELIGION. 

and  words  that  burn  ;  "  still  there  is  a  voice  there  giving  sound, 
coining  from  some  weak  brother,  or  practising  licentiate,  or 
liigh-falutin  sophomore.  I  really  do  not  know  but  after  all, 
our  Quaker  Friends  are  nearest  primitive  practices  in.  this 
most  important  respect.  Their  houses  of  religious  meeting 
are  very  large,  very  plain,  very  clean,  and  abundantly  free  to 
all  who  come.  The  "  weary  and  the  heavy  laden  "  may  indeed 
there  literally  find  rest  —  rest  for  the  weary  body,  rest  in  the 
decent  quiet  of  the  place,  from  the  tumultuous  tossings  of  the 
world's  conflict  with  want,  its  strivings  for  bread.  Next  to 
them  are  the  lovely  Moravian  Brethren,  and  then,  our  Meth- 
odist friends ;  but  they,  alas !  are  receding  before  so-called 
civilization,  or  falling  in  with  the  fashion  of  the  world,  in 
selling  places,  near  God's  altar,  to  the  highest  bidder.  Last 
month  I  went  to  a  church  in  Arch  street,  Philadelphia.  The 
heads  of  the  three  aisles  were  crowded  with  people  waiting 
for  the  one  sexton  to  show  them  places ;  and  we  observed,  in 
several  instances,  that  when  the  owners  came  they  took  keys 
from  their  pockets  and  unlocked  the  pew  doors.  No  doubt 
reasons  are  at  hand  for  the  fine  church  and  for  the  pew  sys- 
tem ;  but  whether  they  will  stand  the  test  of  universal  broth- 
erhood—  all  being  children  of  the  same  common  Father  of 
all,  who  is  himself  no  respecter  of  persons  —  I  cannot  say. 
The  question  comes  back  with  some  power,  Ought  I  to  lock 
my  pew  door  on  a  waiting  brother?  Ought  I  to  exclude  the 
poor  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  by  virtually  excluding 
them  from  receiving  those  teachings  which  guide  and  pre- 
pare for  that  kingdom  ?  These  things  may  at  least  be  rein- 
vesliyated. 

The  general  impression  in  a  Christian  community  is,  that 
the  first  duty  of  man  is  to  become  a  Christian.  A  physician 
is  naturally  possessed  of  the  confidence  of  his  patients  as  to 
health,  and  gradually  that  is  extended  toother  things  as  dear. 
I  am  often  consulted  as  to  marrying,  and  professional  duty 
sometimes  leads  me  to  take  the  initiative  as  to  advice  on  that 
subject ;  the  first  item  of  all  is,  "  Let  (he  man  or  woman  yon 
marry  be  healtlty"  If  your  companion  for  life  is  ignorant, 
you  may  instruct ;  if  poor,  you  may  enrich ;  if  wanting  posi- 
tion, you  may  elevate  ;  if  lacking  religion,  you  may  place  at 
hand  the  means  of  conversion  —  your  own  pious  life  will 


HEALTH,   WEALTH,  AND  RELIGION.  119 

almost  certainly  be  that  means  of  conversion  ;  if  lazy,  or  dirty, 
or  unmethodical,  which  is  just  as  bad,  perhaps,  you  can  correct 
these  by  example,  and  by  judicious  and  encouraging  teachings  ; 
but  if  you  marry  a  bad  constitution,  a  radically  diseased  body, 
there  is  no  effective  certain  remedy,  and  you  lay  the  founda- 
tion for  a  life  of  disquietude,  discouragement,  and  expense  to 
yourself;  white,  if  any  children  are  born  to  you  they  will 
inherit  that  misfortune  in  an  aggravated  form,  and  thus  you 
will  have  a  sickly  child  to  be  a  canker,  a  festering  wound,  a 
rankling  thorn,  a  weary,  wasting  anxiety,  to  the  latest  hour 
of  life  :  for  can  anything  throw  one  ray  of  sunlight  across  my 
heart,  when  the  child  of  my  bosom  is  wasting  and  waning 
before  me  to  a  certain  and  premature  grave  ?  I  think  not. 

To  be  truly  religious,  and  to  have  true  views  on  all  subjects 
connected  with  religion,  a  man  should  have  undisputed  health. 
A  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body  is,  I  believe,  an  axiom  —  a 
first  principle ;  and  as  no  child  is  born  religious,  and  all  "  go 
astray  from  the  womb,  speaking  lies,"  a  healthfully  acting 
mind  in  a  healthy  body  seems  to  be  a  prerequisite  towards 
giving  the  arguments  for  religious  truth  the  consideration 
due  them.  If  this  be  so,  then  the  first  parental  duty  to  the 
new-born  child  is,  not  in  reference  to  religion  directly,  but  in 
reference  to  its  health  —  its  preservation  if  good ,  and  its 
improvement  if  defective.  It  seems,  then,  to  follow,  that  good 
health,  other  things  being  equal,  is  a  prerequisite  iu  the  inves- 
tigation of  religious  truth,  and  rather  increases  the  probabili- 
ty that  the  arguments  substantiating  such  truth  will  be  prop- 
erly appreciated.  In  other  words,  a  healthy  man  is  more 
likely  to  be  brought  under  the  power  of  religious  truth,  and 
to  become  a  Christian  from  sterling  principle,  than  an  un- 
healthy man.  I  know  it  is  said  by  the  blessed  One  himself, 
"  Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  his  righteousness ;  " 
but  a  search  presupposes  eyes  to  see,  health  to  perceive,  the 
full  force  of  exhortation,  argument,  miracle. 

I  will  not  take  it  upon  me  to  run  this  out ;  therefore  I  go 
no  further  than  to  say,  that  the  preservation  and  the  promo- 
tion of  the  highest  health  ©f  body  is  among  the  very  first 
duties  of  an  immortal  mind ;  for,  the  better  we  can  under- 
stand our  duty  here,  the  higher  and  the  more  glorious  will  be 
our  position  hereafter;  and  to  be  able  to  comprehend  our 


120        HEALTH,  WEALTH,  AND  RELIGION. 

duty  in  its  broadest  sense,  and  with  the  most  convincing 
power,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  bring  to  bear  on  that  truth  the 
greatest  strength  of  mind  which  the  highest  health  of  body 
can  secure. 

If  these  things  be  so,  where  stands  the  man  who  pays  no 
attention  to  the  preservation  of  his  health?  Where  stands  the 
parent  who  gives  no  instruction  to  his  children,  nor  causes 
them  to  be  instructed,  as  to  the  laws  of  health  and  life?  Does 
a  good  citizen,  even,  let  alone  a  Christian  parent,  do  his  duty 
by  his  children,  when  he  goes  no  further  than  the  catechism, 
the  confession,  or  the  prayer-book  ? 

If,  then,  I  were  required  to  comprise  in  three  parts  the 
main  effort  of  life,  I  would  say,  — 

Strive,  with  all  the  energy  God  hath  given  you  to  be  healthy, 
to  be  religious,  to  be  rich.  The  more  healthy  you  are,  the 
more  truly  and  highly  religious  you  can  be ;  and  the  rich- 
er you  are,  the  more  can  you  do  towards  placing  the  same 
glorious  religion  within  reach,  at  least,  of  the  perishing  myri- 
ads of  earth's  poor. 

What  I  have  said  is  not  so  much  against  fine  churches,  as 
against  the  very  general  habit  of  bearing  hard  on  riches  and 
rich  men,  hi  theory,  while  in  practice,  all  'that  is  possible  is 
done  to  cause  the  rich  to  bestow  their  riches  on  the  church 
and  its  professed  objects. 

Is  it  right  for  the  pulpit  to  bear  so  hard  from  Sabbath  to 
Sabbath  on  riches,  and  rich  men,  per  se?  More  pains  ought 
to  be  expended  in  a  just  discrimination  between  abused 
wealth,  unsanctified  wealth,  and  wealth  itself.  We  say, 
money  is  the  sinew  of  war ;  not  less  true  is  it  that  money  is 
the  sinew  of  the  war  spiritual.  The  great  Head  of  the  Church 
has  chosen  to  ordain  that  religion  should  be  extended  over 
the  world,  not  by  miracle,  but  by  money  ;  and  the  instrument 
should  be  honored  at  least  for  the  uses  it  is  put  to,  and  not 
fulminated  against,  as  it  is,  almost  with  spitefulness,  some- 
times as  unwise  as  the  railings  of  the  rabble,  in  the  times  of 
barricades,  against  the  rich,  and  the  titled,  and  the  elevated. 

Our  newspapers,  too,  make  it  a  standing  and  favorite  theme 
to  bespatter  the  rich  —  to  anathematize  them.  Indeed,  the 
unguarded  are  almost  persuaded  sometimes  to  consider  it  a 
crime  to  be  rich.  This  is  all  wrong,  radically  wrong.  Instead 


CORN  BREAD  AND   CONSTIPATION.  121 

of  cherishing  a  kind  of  malignant  feeling  against  such  men, 
we  ought  rather  to  go  on  the  principle  that  to  be  rich,  pre- 
supposes its  possessor  to  have  been  a  man  of  industry,  of 
self-denial,  and  of  economy  :  therefore,  in  all  justice,  the  very 
fact  of  a  man  being  rich  entitles  him  to  our  respect ;  for  I  am 
persuaded  that  more  men  are  rich  from  inheritance,  and  from 
economy  and  industry,  than  from  dishonorable  practices. 
And  surely  there  is  nothing  discreditable  in  being  wealthy 
either  by  inheritance  or  by  industry.  Away,  then,  with  this 
railing  against  the  rich.  Let  it  be  preached  from  the  pulpit, 
and  let  it  be  proclaimed  by  the  press,  with  its  million  tongues, 
that  to  accumulate  wealth  is  one  of  the  first,  one  of  the  high- 
est, one  of  the  noblest,  duties  of  an  immortal  mind  ;  and  then, 
that  to  use  it  benevolently,  makes  that  mind  akin  to  God. 


CORN  BREAD    AND   CONSTIPATION. 

CORN  BREAD,  —  the  "  Indian  "  of  the  North,  —  when  prop- 
erly made  and  of  suitable  materials,  is  a  sweet,  healthful,  and 
delightful  article  of  food.  We  seldom  see  Southern  corn 
bread  on  a  Northern  table,  because  the  meal  is  ground  entirely 
too  fine,  and  becomes  soggy  in  the  baking.  To  obviate  this 
sogginess,  and  its  effects  on  the  system,  Northerners  put 
physic  in  their  meal,  and  make  it,  sometimes,  apparently  as 
good  as  the  Southern  bread,  whose  only  constituents  are  meal 
itself,  a  little  milk,  and  some  salt. 

One  pound  of  Indian,  that  is,  corn  meal ;  one  and  a  half 
pints  of  milk,  five  eggs,  a  piece  of  butter  as  large  as  a  hen's 
egg,  a  lump  of  soda  as  large  as  a  pea,  and  a  teaspoonful  of 
cream  of  tartar.  Bake  it  three  quarters  of  an  hour. 

Real  Corn  Bread. — Persons  who  prefer  not  to  take  physic 
in  their  food,  may  make  a  very  superior  and  healthful  article 
of  corn  bread,  as  follows :  One  quart  of  sour  milk,  two 
table-spoons  of  flour,  three  eggs,  and  as  much  corn  meal  as 
will  make  a  stiff  batter. 

Indian-Meal  Waffles.  — Boil  two  cups  of  hominy  very  soft, 
and  an  equal  quantity  of  sifted  Indian-meal,  a  table-spoonful 
of  salt,  half  a  tea-cup  of  butter,  and  three  eggs,  with  milk 


122  HEALTHFULNESS   OF  FRUIT. 

enough  to  make  a  thin  batter.  Beat  altogether,  and  bake  in 
waffle  irons.  When  eggs  cannot  be  procured,  yeast  is  a  good 
substitute  ;  put  a  spoonful  in  the  batter,  and  let  it  stand  an 
hour  to  rise. 

The  medicinal  effects  of  corn  bread,  as  also  of  bran  bread, 
wheaten  grits,  <£c.,  arise,  in  part,  from  the  roughness  of  the 
particles  of  meal  gently  irritating  the  surface  of  the  intestines 
along  which  it  passes,  causing  the  secretaries  to  pour  out  a 
more  copious  supply  of  fluid,  which,  gradually  accumulating 
in  the  lower  intestines,  acts  on  the  same  principle  as  an  in- 
jection, namely,  by  the  distension  which  it  occasions,  and 
the  subsequent  reaction  of  contraction,  which  expels  the 
contents  of  the  lower  bowel,  called  the  rectum. 

I  cannot  but  pause  here  to  call  the  reader's  attention  to 
this,  among  the  multitude  of  other  evidences  of  the  wonderful 
wisdom  displayed  in  our  formation,  by  Him  who  made  all 
worlds.  The  functions  of  the  anus,  considered  the  most 
Despicable  part  of  man,  are  carried  on  by  principles,  which, 
at  the  expiration  of  six  thousand  years,  man  has  just  learned 
to  apply  to  machinery,  and  which,  when  observed,  for  the 
first  time,  in  the  machine-shop,  strikes  the  beholder  with 
wonder.  It  is  observed  in  the  printing-press,  when  the  bed 
has  moved  to  a  certain  limit,  it  instantly  returns,  apparently 
of  itself,  to  its  former  position,  and  that,  too,  when  the  main 
wheels  continue  running  in  the  same  direction,  the  whole 
mass  seeming  to  act  by  instinct,  as  if  it  knew  how  far  it 
should  go,  and  then  return  without  bidding.  It  is  well  worth 
the  reader's  while  to  visit  an  establishment  where  steam- 
engines  are  made,  to  witness  this. 


HEALTHFULNESS   OF    FRUIT. 

RAW  fruit,  fresh,  ripe,  and  perfect,  is  safe  and  healthful  at 
all  seasons  of  the  year,  and  amid  the  ravages  of  disease, 
whether  epidemic,  endemic,  or  sporadic,  general,  special,  or 
local.  Under  proper  restrictions  as  to  quantity,  such  fruit, 
as  named,  will  cure  a  diarrhoea,  aid  in  removing  a  cold,  colic, 
fever,  or  any  other  disease  whose  treatment  requires  the 


MORAL   CAUSES  OF  CHOLERA.  123 

bowels  to  be  kept  freely  open.  For  this  effect,  fresh  ripe 
fruit  is  good ;  but  to  be  used  advantageously,  in  health  and 
disease,  the  following  rules  are  imperative  :  — 

1st.    Fruit  should  be  eaten  ripe,  raw,  fresh,  and  perfect. 

2d.    It  should  be  eaten  in  moderation. 

3d.  It  should  be  eaten  not  later  than  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon . 

4th.  No  water,  or  fluid  of  any  description,  should  be  swal- 
lowed within  an  hour  after  eating  fruit. 

5th.  To  have  its  full,  beneficial  effect,  nothing  else  should 
be  eaten  at  the  time  the  fruit  is  taken. 

It  is  to  the  neglect  of  these  observances  that  erroneous 
impressions  prevail  in  many  families,  and  to  an  extent,  too, 
in  some  instances,  that  the  most  luscious  peach,  or  apple,  or 
bunch  of  grapes,  is  regarded  as  that  much  embodied  cholera 
and  death.  When  will  men  learn  to  be  observant  and 
reflective  ? 


MORAL  CAUSES  OF  CHOLERA. 

THE  "  London  Christian  Times  "  suggests  that  moral  causes 
have  much  to  do  in  engendering  this  disease,  and  that  moral 
remedies  may  go  far  to  alleviate  or  cure  it. 

The  filthy,  low-lying  regions,  says  the  "Times,"  where  the 
disease  presents  itself  with  most  inveteracy,  are  also  the 
regions  of  coarse,  imbruted  vice.  Self-indulgence  in  sordid 
and  unwholesome  luxuries  undermine  the  constitution.  Per- 
severance in  such  indulgence,  fora  series  of  generations,  debili- 
tates a  race.  The  harass  and  anxiety  attendant  upon  preca- 
rious aud  dishonest  means  of  obtaining  a  livelihood,  shake 
terribly  such  enfeebled  constitutions. 

Vicious  indulgence  and  sordid  habits,  by  demoralizing  a 
large  proportion  of  the  lower  classes,  are  the  real  cause  of 
predisposition  to  a  new  and  awful  form  of  disease.  The  filth 
and  squalor  are  merely  the  external  indications  of  this  inter- 
nal rottenness.  When  a  large  portion  of  any  community  has 
been  thus  predisposed,  disease  catches  around  it  like  wild-fire, 
and  even  those  who  have  kept  themselves  above  the  general 


I 

124  THRO  AT- AIL. 

degradation  are  not  exempted  from  its  visitations.  The  hon- 
est poor  are  by  their  poverty  brought  into  contagious  prox- 
imity to  the  class  prepared  for  sickness.  The  wealthy  are 
brought  into  contact  with  the  infected  stratum  of  society  by 
business  relations.  Let  the  whole  truth  be  told  :  the  vicious 
and  the  unreflecting  of  the  wealthier  class  expose  themselves 
to  contagion  by  visiting  infected  dens  in  search  of  illicit 
pleasure.  Nay,  more  ;  the  anxious,  mammon-hunting,  volup- 
tuous habits  of  the  wealthy  predispose  them  to  contagion. 

Moral  causes  of  disease  can  only  be  combated  by  counter- 
agents.  It  is  not  meant  that  physical  remedies  and  lenitives 
for  cholera  are  to  be  dispensed  with,  but  that  moral  remedies 
and  lenitives  are  to  be  superadded. 


THROAT-AIL. 

I  HAVE  endeavored  in  all  my  writings  to  substitute  the 
words  Throat-Ail  for  Laryngitis,  or  Clergymen's  Sore  Throat: 
it  is  shorter,  more  comprehensive,  more  correct,  and  has  the 
advantage  of  being  plain  English.  It  is  a  disease  which  every 
mother  ought  to  understand  ;  for,  in  the  shape  of  croup,  it  puts 
her  child  in  the  grave  in  a  few  hours.  Every  person  who 
loves  to  sing  should  know  its  nature,  for  it  destroys  the 
voice.  Every  lawyer,  every  clergyman,  every  politician, 
ought  to  make  it  their  study,  for  it  robs  them  of  their  capital 
in  trade,  and  often  lays  them  on  the  shelf  for  life.  In  short, 
it  should  be  generally  understood,  at  least  as  to  its  symptoms, 
for  it  is  very  often  the  forerunner  of  consumption,  that  hated 
name. 

There  are  two  forms  of  throat-ail  —  the  rapid  and  the  slow. 
By  rapid  throat-ail,  the  great  and  good  Washington  perished 
prematurely,  in  a  few  hours'  illness.  By  the  slow  kind,  many 
public  men  are  deprived  of  their  means  of  usefulness  and  of 
support,  and  have  to  spend  their  remaining  days  in  struggling 
for  a  scant  subsistence,  or  in  following  some  new  trade  in  their 
old  age. 

I  v.  rite  for  the  people,  and  think  it  sufficient  for  the  general 


THROAT-AIL.  125 

good,  to  acquaint  my  readers  with  merely  the  symptoms  and 
the  causes  of  what  is  called  throat-ail,  par  excellence,  the 
kind  which  lasts  for  weeks  and  months  and  years,  ending  in 
disablement  of  voice,  and  finally  death  by  consumption. 

Throat-ail  is  like  a  fire  —  the  sooner  you  know  of  its  exist- 
ence, the  better;  and  like  a  fire,  too,  which  seldom  goes  out 
of  itself.  So  throat-ail  seldom  indeed  gets  well  of  itself,  but 
burrows  and  deepens,  until  it  undermines  the  constitution, 
wastes  away  the  health  and  strength  and  flesh,  and  finally, 
fastening  itself  in  the  lungs,  completes  the  wreck  and  ruin  of 
the  whole  man. 

The  first  symptoms  of  Throat-Ail,  or  Chronic  Laryngitis, 
or  Clergymen's  Sore  Throat,  are  usually  a  frequent  hemming 
and  hacking,  in  order  to  clear  the  voice  or  throat.  This  is 
slight  and  seldom  at  first,  and  may  not  be  noticed  for  weeks  ; 
but  then  it  is  so  decided,  that  it  forces  itself  upon  the  atten- 
tion, either  by  its  frequency,  or  by  the  force  required  to  clear 
the  throat  sufficiently  to  speak  with  distinctness.  After  a 
while,  it  requires  such  an  effort  to  enunciate  plainly,  that  the 
patient,  for  the  first  time,  becomes  aware  of  a  certain  feeling 
of  tiredness  about  the  throat  or  neck  ;  most  generally  it  is  a 
dull  hurting :  or  he  finds  there  is  a  kind  of  lumpish  feeling  in 
the  throat,  and  he  attempts  to  swallow  it  away,  and  it  does 
seem  to  go  down,  but  it  does  not  stay  down,  and  he  swallows 
again,  and  soon  he  finds  himself  swallowing  all  the  time.  Oc- 
casionally there  is  a  different  cause  for  swallowing :  the  throat 
appears  to  be  dry,  and  swallowing  for  a  time  seems  to  moist- 
en it ;  finally,  the  swallowing  is  almost  incessant,  especially 
if  the  mind  is  directed  to  it.  For  a  time,  nothing  is  brought 
away ;  gradually  a  little  pearly  or  wrhitish  or  cottony-likc 
phlegm  is  brought  up,  and  the  patient  becomes  hoarse.  In 
the  progress  of  things  this  phlegm  becomes  dryish,  and  so 
tough  that  it  clings  to  the  inside  of  the  throat,  and  can  only 
be  dislodged  by  a  decided  effort  at  clearing,  with  a  dipping 
forward  of  the  head.  The  voice  next  becomes  husky  ;  at  last 
a  positive  cough  is  necessary  to  dislodge  the  phlegm,  and  con- 
sumption soon  follows. 

The  symptoms  detailed  are  present  in  the  history  of  every 
case  I  have  known.  Accompanying  these,  there  are  occa- 
sional additional  symptoms.  A  kind  of  pain,  sharp  or  hurt- 


126  THROAT-AIL. 

ing,  runs  up  the  side  of  the  neck  towards  the  ear.  Some 
complain  of  a  burning  feeling  now  and  then  at  the  little  hol- 
low at  the  bottom  of  the  neck,  or  up  and  down  the  breast 
bone  in  the  centre,  or  at  the  pit  of  the  stomach.  These  burn- 
ing sensations  are  not  felt  continuously  in  any  case,  but  at 
certain  times  during  the  day. 

A  very  common  symptom  is  a  depression  of  spirits,  alto- 
gether greater  than  the  actual  feeling  of  discomfort  warrants. 
In  the  progress  of  the  disease,  the  feet  become  cold  ;  there  is 
a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth  of  mornings  ;  occasional  headache  ; 
the  bowels  do  not  act  daily,  or  if  they  do,  what  is  passed  is 
hard  or  bally ;  the  patient  is  easily  chilled ;  "  the  slightest 
thing  in  the  world"  gives  him  a  cold,  and  "a  cold  always 
makes  the  throat  worse."  The  food  cither  sours  on  the  stom- 
ach, or  remains  there  like  a  weight  for  hours  at  a  time  ;  the 
appetite  becomes  impaired  ;  or,  it  is  so  voracious  that  "  I  can 
eat  almost  anything,"  and  yet  w  hungry  all  the  time."  The 
patient  begins  to  lose  flesh  and  strength,  and  does  not  swal- 
low as  easy  as  he  used  to  ;  at  length  he  cannot  swallow  at  all ; 
in  the  effort,  even,  water  comes  back  through  the  nose,  and  the 
man  dies  of  starvation. 

Reader,  if  you  have  incipient  symptoms  of  throat-ail,  dp 
not  be  a  fool,  and  go  to  some  old  woman  or  Indian  doctor,  or 
some  officious  and  all-knowing  granny,  and  waste  time,  and 
perhaps  life,  in  experimenting  on  red-pepper  tea,  or  the  soup 
made  by  Shakespeare's  witches.  Do  not  go  to  swallowing 
brandy,  or  the  still  more  murderous  lozenges  of  the  shops ; 
for  brandy  may  not  certainly  kill  any  man ;  lozenges  will. 
But  go  at  once  to  a  regularly  educated  physician,  who  is,  as  I 
think,  necessarily  a  gentleman ;  he  will  not  promise  to  cure 
you  in  a  week,  or  in  a  month,  or  in  a  century  ;  he  will  promise 
you  just  nothing  at  all ;  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  you  un- 
derstand that  he  feels  it  his  duty  and  his  interest  to  do  for 
you  the  best  he  can,  and  he  will  do  it.  Do  not  tell  him  that, 
if  he  cures  you,  there  are  a  few  more  of  the  same  sort  left  in 
your  neighborhood  who  will  also  come.  Do  not  promise  him 
an  extra  fee  if  he  is  successful  in  your  case ;  for  it  will  only 
make  him  feel  that  you  arc  as  green  as  you  suppose  him  to 
be.  Do  not  come  the  pathetic  over  him  —  that  you  have  six 
wives,  living  and  dead,  and  nineteen  children,  and  you  hope 


THRO  AT- AIL.  127 

he  will  do  the  best  he  can  for  you,  for  —  the  smallest  price 
possible.  In  calling  upon  such  a  physician,  you  have  only 
two  things  to  do  :  tell  your  symptoms,  and  follow  his  advice 
implicitly  and  well.  His  reputation  and  his  bread  depend  on 
his  success  :  you  can  appeal  to  no  higher  motives.  And 
always  remember,  that  it  is  impossible  for  such  a  physician  to 
say  to  you,  "  No  cure,  no  pay."  Is  a  man  to  spend  weary 
hours,  and  anxious  days,  and  sleepless  nights,  in  trying  to 
save  your  life,  and  to  be  paid  nothing  unless  he  succeeds, 
especially  when  you  have  spent  all  your  money  on  patent  med- 
icines and  advertising  certifyers?  Shame  on  the  man  who 
could  make  such  a  proposition  ! 

Causes  of  Throat- Ail. — I  cannot  here  state  them  all,  nor  at 
length,  only  the  principal  ones,  and  them  succinctly. 

I  have  now  these  many  years  confined  my  attention  rigidly 
and  exclusively  to  throat  and  lung  diseases.  I  think  I  was 
the  first  physician  in  the  United  States  to  do  so,  as  rigidly.  I 
know  not  that  there  is  any  one  besides  myself  in  this  country 
who  dismisses  every  case,  invariably,  in  which  the  air  pas- 
sages are  not  involved.  I  make  this  statement  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enabling  the  reader  to  place  the  deserved  estimate  at 
the  assertion  I  am  going  to  make,  to  wit :  Three  cases  out  of 
every  four,  coming  to  me  for  throat-ail,  have  it  as  the  result 
of  improper  eating  and  drinking. 

Such  a  large  proportion  of  cases  of  throat-ail  originating  in 
the  stomach,  I  found  my  remaining  remarks  on  this  general 
origin  :  — 

How  can  the  Stomach  make  the  Throat  Sore  ?  —  A  stroke 
against  the  elbow  is  felt  at  the  fingers'  ends.  When  your  foot 
is  asleep,  from  sitting  on  a  hard  edge  of  wood  for  some  time, 
the  caus.e  is  at  the  point  of  pressure,  and  yet  it  tingles  in  the 
toes  a  yard  off.  A  good  knock  on  the  head  "  makes  the  fire 
fly"  at  the  eyes. 

The  condition  of  the  throat  is  affected  by  the  condition  of 
the  stomach,  because  a  certain  nerve  branches  off:  one  part  of 
that  nerve  goes  to  the  stomach :  the  other  fork  goes  to  the 
throat.  The  nerves  are  like  the  telegraphic  wires  :  touch  them 
at  one  end,  and  an  effect  is  produced  at  the  other.  So  if  the 
nerves  which  supply  the  stomach  are  disordered,  those  in  the 
throat  are  liable  to  become  so  too.  Most  of  us  have  heard  of 


128  THRO  AI- AIL. 

w  heart-burn  ;  "  some  have  felt  it.  It  is  a  burning  sensation, 
sometimes  felt  at  the  point  familiarly  called  "the  pit  of  the 
stomach  ; "  and  sometimes,  in  persons  who  use  their  voice 
much,  this  same  burning  is  felt  at  the  little  hollow  at  the 
bottom  of  the  throat,  and  the  region  of  Adam's-apple ;  and 
that  is  the  spot  where  throat-ail  is  located. 

I  wish  here  to  arrest  the  attention  of  clergymen,  singers, 
teachers,  and  public  speakers,  to  this  interesting  inquiry : 
If  sour  stomach,  or  dyspepsia,  as  the  physicians  term  it, 
causes  burning,  or  other  sensations,  in  the  throat  of  clergy- 
men, and  other  persons  who  use  their  voice  much,  why  does 
not  sour  stomach  affect  the  throats  of  all,  as  the  same  nerve 
supplies  branches  to  both  throat  and  stomach?  This  is  the 
reason  :  a  slight  stomach  derangement  does  not  affect  the 
throat  perceptibly,  if  the  voice-organs  are  in  a  strong,  active, 
healthful  condition,  because  they  have  vigor  to  repel  disease. 
It  is  a  law  of  the  human  frame,  that  an  ailment  is  apt  to  make 
itself  felt  next,  or  most  decidedly,  in  that  particular  part  of 
the  body,  which,  at  the  time,  is  weakest  in  the  performance 
of  its  functions ;  and  as  the  voice-organs  are  often  in  a  lax 
or  debilitated  condition  from  frequent  or  unusual  voice- 
efforts,  or  injudicious  conduct  after  voice-effort,  and  are, 
at  length,  made  permanently  feeble  by  these  repeated  uses 
and  indiscretions,  so,  being  the  next  weakest  part,  disease 
flies  there.  Thus  it  is,  too,  that,  when  such  persons  take 
cold,  the  throat,  being  the  weak  part,  feels  it  promptly. 

A  proper  use  of  the  voice  strengthens  the  throat,  and  gives 
it  a  capability  of  resisting  disease,  just  as  a  judicious  use  of 
any  other  muscles  of  the  body  increase  their  strength  and 
health  ;  but  improper  use,  as  just  stated,  by  weakening,  ren- 
ders them  more  susceptible  of  disease  of  any  kiud,  and 
specially  of  the  stomach,  in  consequence  of  the  nervous 
connection  before  described. 

Any  injury  done  to  any  part  of  the  body  may  be  resisted,  or, 
if  not,  may  be  repaired,  by  the  curative  energies  of  Nature ; 
but  if  these  injuries  are  frequently  repeated,  the  strength  of 
future  is  exhausted  in  endeavoring  to  make  repairs ;  then  she 
remains  prostrate  and  powerless,  and  disease  has  unbridled 
sway. 

When,  in  any  given  case,  a  man  is  in  a  condition  to  have 


THROAT- AIL.  129 

his  throat  affected  by  the  state  of  his  stomach,  violence  is 
offered  the  throat  at  each  meal,  three  times  a  day.  In  time, 
these  effects  last  longer,  until  the  effect  of  one  meal  reaches 
to  another,  and  the  throat  is  more  or  less  ailing  all  the  time. 

But,  to  follow  up  the  case,  how  is  it  that  persons  have  sour 
stomach,  or  heart-burn? 

All  understand  that  what  is  sweet  cider  to-day  is  sour  to- 
morrow. We  look  at  it,  and  find  it  in  constant  motion  :  it  is 
**  working,"  fermenting.  When  food  is  taken  into  a  healthy 
and  well-acting  stomach,  it  is,  in  a  short  time,  digested,  — 
that  is,  converted  into  a  kind  of  liquid  ;  no  lumps,  or  anything 
of  the  sort  in  it ;  just  as  when  you  place  a  great  many  bits  of 
ice  and  snow  in  a  glass  of  water,  the  mass  soon  becomes  all 
fluid  alike.  The  food  is  made  into  this  one  fluid  substance 
by  the  action  of  the  stomach,  and  what  pertains  to  it.  But 
the  amount  of  food  which  the  stomach  can  thus  turn  into  a 
liquid  form  is  limited ;  just  as  if  you  put  a  certain  amount  of 
ice  lumps  in  a  glass  of  water,  that  water  will  melt  them ;  but 
if  you  put  in  too  many,  none  of  them  are  wholly  melted,  and 
it  remains  a  mixture  of  water,  spears  of  ice,  and  solid  ice. 
When,  then,  more  food  is  taken  into  the  stomach,  at  any 
one  time,  than  it  can  convert  into  a  homogeneous  fluid,  it 
remains  in  lumps,  more  or  less,  and  it  is  said  to  be  undi- 
gested, and  begins  immediately  to  ferment,  to  become  sour, 
and  produces  in  the  stomach  the  same  sensation  that  swal- 
lowing vinegar  causes  in  the  throat  —  a  burning. 

We  see,  then,  that  sour  stomach  is  caused  by  eating  more 
than  the  stomach  can  digest.  But  how  are  we  to  tell  how 
much  the  stomach  can  digest  ?  Observe  Nature.  The  brutes 
are  regulated  in  all  these  things  by  instinct.  To  us  the  nobler 
reason  is  given,  and  it  must  be  our  guide ;  we  must  observe 
and  judge. 

What  one  man  eats  or  drinks,  in  quality  or  quantity,  is  no 
guide  for  any  other  man,  any  more  than  the  amount  of  labor 
one  can  perform  is  the  criterion  for  another.  Each  man  must, 
for  himself,  bring  his  own  observation  and  judgment  to  bear 
on  the  question,  How  much  must  I  eat  ?  The  general  rule  is, 
Do  not  eat  so  much  as  to  cause  any  unpleasant  sensation 
afterwards. 

If  you,  at  any  time,  take  a  meal,  and  afterwards,  within  an 


130  THROAT-AIL. 

hour  or  two,  feel  uncomfortably,  then,  what  you  have  eaten 
does  not  agree  with  you;  you  have  eaten,  either  in  quantity  or 
quality,  what  your  stomach  cannot  digest.  Nine  times  out 
of  ten  it  is  the  quantity,  and  not  the  quality,  which  does  the 
mischief. 

When  persons  have  been  ailing  some  time,  almost  every- 
thing they  eat,  or  drink,  sours  on  the  stomach  ;  even  a  cup 
of  tea,  or  a  glass  of  cold  water,  or  toasted  bread,  gives  sour- 
ness, or  weight,  or  oppression,  or  some  other  ill  feeling.  In 
time  the  throat  begins  to  feel  tired,  dry,  or  to  burn,  or 
smart,  or  is  clogged  up  a  little,  and  we  are  all  the  time  clear- 
ing it  away.  This  is  "dyspeptic  throat-ail,"  or  clergymen's 
sore-throat.  But  why  was  such  a  name  given  to  it?  Be- 
cause, to  a  certain  extent,  it  is  a  comparatively  new  disease. 
We  read  little  or  nothing  of  it  in  the  old  books  ;  —  a  new  dis- 
ease as  much,  then,  as  cholera  is  a  new  disease.  It  was, 
perhaps,  first  noticed  to  attack  clergymen,  for  two  reasons  : 
the  injudicious  use  of  the  voice,  as  noticed  in  the  article  on 
"Air  and  Exercise,"  page  16;  and  from  increased  notoriety 
over  a  common  patient ;  for  when  the  minister  is  ailing,  the 
whole  town  and  adjoining  country  soon  know  it.  But  I  am 
now  come  to  the  point  of  exposing  one  of  the  two  grand  mis- 
takes of  modern  times  in  reference  to  health.  I  will  name 
them  both  here,  although  I  will,  at  present,  discuss  but  one. 
The  first  mistake  is,  about  injuring  one's  health  by  hard  study ; 
and  the  other  is,  that  a  minister  has  become  disabled  by  his 
"  arduous  labors"  These  two  things  are  simply  pious  frauds  : 
the  former  committed,  generally,  by  young  students ;  the 
latter,  by  young  clergymen,  securing  for  them  a  kind  of 
sympathy  considered  to  belong  to  martyrs.  Two  things  I 
know  :  the  first  is,  I  never  injured  my  health  by  hard  study  ; 
the  nearest  I  came  to  it  was  in  ruining  my  eyes  by  studying 
the  miserable  edition  of  Schrevelius' Lexicon,  "a  long  time 
ago,"  till  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  the  days  having  been  spent 
in  writing  poetry  and  pathetic  epistles  to  a  schoolmate.  I 
received  sympathy,  instead  of  the  switch,  just  as  nine  young 
gentlemen  out  of  ten,  in  the  college,  the  university,  and  the 
lecture-room,  are  complimented,  when  their  health  gives  way, 
with  the  appellation  of  a  hard  student.  I  never  knew  a  man, 
young  or  old,  to  injure  himself  by  hard  study.  It  is  a 
mistake. 


THRO  AT- AIL.  131 

The  other  of  the  two  grand  mistakes,  before  alluded  to,  I 
propose  to  discuss,  is  this  :  Clergymen's  sore  throat  is  wrong- 
fully set  down  to  the  score  of  "arduous  labors."  Let  the  ob- 
servant reader  reflect  a  moment  on  a  little  fact  which  may  not 
have,  as  yet,  formed  itself  in  words,  but  which,  upon  men- 
tion, will  bring  with  it  a  realizing  sense  of  its  truthfulness. 

Away  out  in  the  wild  woods  of  the  West,  where  I  "was 
raised,"  the  people  are  a  type  of  Gotham  and  Fifth  Avenue ; 
the  only  difference  being,  as  Wads  worth  told  us  one  Sunday, 
not  long  since,  in  one  of  his  grand  efforts,  the  greater  or  less 
exaggeration  of  any  given  characteristic.  Well,  away  out 
there,  where  the  folks  are,  as  Eastern  people  believe,  a  kind 
of  half-and-half  mixture  of  the  civilized  and  the  savage,  spe- 
cially the  latter,  people  love  their  minister,  —  they  love  him 
affectionately  as  David  did  Jonathan,  —  and  if  he  does  not 
come  to  see  them  often,  their  feelings  are  hurt.  But  if  he 
comes,  and  does  not  eat  with  them,  "it  is  no  see  at  all;" 
it  is  not  considered  a  visit.  He  must  not  only  come,  but 
"come  often."  As  it  is  their  minister,  they  honestly  think  that 
nothing  they  can  put  on  the  table  is  too  good  for  him ;  conse- 
quently the  modern  Martha  "  dishes  up  "  everything  she  thinks 
good,  and  everything  "her  man"  thinks  is  good,  and  every- 
thing the  guest  is  supposed  or  known  to  like ;  and  the  result 
is  a  conglomeration  of  everything  under  the  sun.  Suppose 
it  a  "  supper,"  as  is  generally  the  case ;  they  do  not  take  a 
dish  of  tea,  out  West;  they  "eat  supper"  —  the  third  and  last 
meal  of  the  day.  Well,  look  in  on  that  Kentucky  supper. 
There  is  coffee  and  tea,  to  begin  with,  and  hot  biscuit,  and 
corn  bread,  and  wheat  bread,  and  boiled  chicken,  and  a 
mackerel,  and  chipped  beef,  and  ham  and  eggs,  with  a 
pitcher  of  pure  milk,  and  honey,  and  molasses,  and  all  the 
different  kind  of  preserves  ever  thought  of,  besides  butter- 
milk, and  pie,  and  cider,  and  baked  apples.  That  is  a  West- 
ern supper,  reader;  and  the  minister  is  expected  to  take  a  bit 
of  everything  there.  They  would  be  almost  affronted,  if  he 
did  not ;  if  he  did  not  make  a  dash  at  the  whole  category  r 
they  would  say  he  was  proud,  and  there  his  influence  would 
end.  He  knows  it,  and  feels,  in  a  sense,  compelled  to  eat 
more  than  he  wants  —  certainly  more  than  he  needs,  and 
more  than  he  would  eat  if  there  was  not  variety  to  tempt. 


132  THROAT-AIL. 

We  have  the  same  thing  here  in  New  York,  although  in  a 
more  refined  shape.  Instead  of  such  "suppers"  at  sundown, 
we  have  regular  dinners  at  ten  o'clock  at  night;  and,  having 
to  wait  several  hours  longer  than  usual,  there  is  such  a  raven- 
ous appetite,  that  an  amount  is  eaten  very  far  beyond  the 
needs  of  the  system,  keeping  the  stomach  laboring,  for  hours 
after,  to  relieve  itself  of  the  unwonted  burden.  Such  occur- 
rences, frequently  taking  place,  will  inevitably  induce  dys- 
peptic habits,  and  all  their  long  catalogues  of  ill.  Our 
ministers  are  feasted  too  much. 

Another  cause  of  dyspepsia  in  ministers  is,  eating  too  soon 
after  preaching.  For  two  or  three  hours  the  tide  of  nervous 
energy  has  been  setting  in  strongly  towards  the  brain,  and  it 
cannot  be  suddenly  turned  towards  the  stomach  ;  but  the  men- 
tal effort  has  occasioned  a  feeling  of  faintuess  or  debility  about 
the  stomach,  and  a  morbid  appetite;  and  if  food  is  taken  at 
all  largely,  there  is  not  the  nervous  energy  there  requisite  to 
effect  its  digestion ;  for  the  brain  will  be  running  over  the 
discourse.  You  may  bring  the  mind  back  to  the  eating,  for 
a  moment ;  but,  before  you  are  aware  of  it,  it  will  be  laboring 
at  the  discourse  again.  Every  public  speaker  knows  this ; 
and  the  food  lies  there,  like  a  weight,  or  a  lump  for  hours. 

The  same  result  is  produced,  in  a  less  decided  form,  by 
studying  out  a  sermon.  The  mind  becomes  absorbed ;  the 
announcement  for  dinner  is  made ;  you  are  unprepared  for 
it ;  it  is  rather  unwelcome.  You  do  not  feel  hungry  ;  for  the 
brain  is  at  work,  not  the  stomach.  However,  as  it  is  meal- 
time, you  go  down;  but  the  mind  is  in  your  "study,"  and 
you  eat  because  it  is  dinner-time,  and  not  because  you  have 
an  appetite  —  the  principal  cause  of  the  most  aggravated 
forms  of  dyspeptic  disease  —  eating  without  an  appetite  — 
one  of  the  most  suicidal  of  all  domestic  practices ;  eating, 
simply,  because  it  is  eating-time,  rather  than,  by  waiting 
until  the  appetite  comes,  give  the  trouble  to  prepare  another 
meal.  Every  student  should  leave  his  books  at  least  half  an 
hour  before  a  meal,  and  spend  that  half-hour  in  a  leisure  walk 
in  the  open  air,  or  in  agreeable  conversation  on  the  piazza,  or 
in  the  garden. 

An  Instructive  Warning  to  Clergymen. — In  illustration 
of  the  principles  stated,  I  will  record  here  a  fact.  A  very 


THROAT-AIL.  133 

eminent  D.  D.,  within  a  year,  has  given  up  the  charge  of  his 
congregation,  from  a  complaint  in  the  throat.  His  parishion- 
ers, in  parting  with  him,  presented  him  writh  a  farm  ;  and  now 
he  is  lecturing  over  the  country,  and  nothing  is  heard  about 
his  throat-complaint,  except  when  he  leaves  his  wife  at  home; 
when  that  is  the  case,  he  is  laid  up  instanter.  As  long  as  she 
is  at  his  side,  to  watch  over  what  he  eats,  as  to  quality  and 
amount,  he  keeps  well ;  when  he  transgresses,  the  food  sours 
on  the  stomach,  the  throat  burns,  gets  clogged  up,  he  is 
hoarse  and  useless. 

I  have  extended  this  article  beyond  my  calculation ;  but  its 
importance  cannot  be  over-estimated ;  for  I  consider  it  a  sta- 
tistical fact,  that  three  out  of  four  of  all  the  clergymen  who 
are  prematurely  set  aside,  as  unavailable  workers,  are  thus 
set  aside  in  consequence  of  errors  in  diet  —  errors,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  inseparable  from  their  present  connection  with 
society,  in  the  manner  I  have  stated. 

Throat-ail,  then,  being  generally  located  in  the  stomach, 
what  is  the  use  of  gargling  the  throat  with  acids  and  metallic 
preparations,  which  destroy  the  teeth?  And  what  is  the  use 
of  swabbing  out  the  throat  with  nitrate  of  silver,  when  the 
source  of  the  disease  is  elsewhere?  It  does,  I  know,  some- 
times give  relief;  but  it  is  not  permanent ;  it  cannot  be,  for  it 
is  merely  covering  a  black  spot  on  the  wall  with  whitewash. 
The  spot  is  not  seen,  but  it  is  there  still ;  but,  unlike  the  black 
spot,  which  is  in  statu  quo,  the  disease,  though  covered,  is  bur- 
rowing still.  If,  again,  the  disease  is  really  in  the  stomach, 
it  is  a  useless  waste  of  time,  it  is  unphilosophical,  to  tell  a 
clergyman  who  has  throat-ail  that  he  must  abandon  preaching ; 
because  the  voice-muscles  must  be  treated  like  any  other  mus- 
cle of  the  body  which  is  debilitated  —  their  energies  must  be 
invited  back  by  judicious  forms  of  exercise,  just  as  in  recov- 
ering from  a  fever,  we  increase  our  strength,  by  exercising 
carefully  and  gradually,  and  safely  increasing  that  exercise. 

Besides,  if  the  minister  gives  up  his  congregation,  he  gives 
up  his  bread ;  and  he  not  only  has  leisure  to  brood  over,  and 
thus  aggravate,  his  ailment,  but  also  to  worry  himself  as  to 
some  mode  of  obtaining  subsistence  in  a  manner  not  incon- 
sistent with  his  former  calling.  Hence,  the  indispensable 
means  of  curing  an  ordinary  case  of  clergymen's  sore-throat 


THROAT- AIL. 

are  to  keep  the  patient  at  work,  modifying  the  forms  of  voice- 
exercise  according  to  the  needs  and  habits  of  each  case,  and 
the  regulation  of  the  digestive  functions  by  a  proper  adapta- 
tion of  food,  as  to  quantity  and  quality,  to  the  needs  of  the 
system. 

Cold  feet  often  produce  a  burning  sensation  in  the  throat, 
which,  if  allowed  to  continue  in  operation,  ultimately  under- 
mines the  health.  The  reason  is,  less  blood  being  in  the  feet 
than  is  natural,  there  is  an  extra  amount  at  the  other  end  of 
the  body.  Can  anything  be  more  absurd  than  to  clip  off  a 
man's  palate,  whack  out  his  tonsils,  and  "  burn  out  his  thrpat," 
for  such  an  ailment?  Can  that  send  warmth  to  the  feet?  Can 
we  purify  the  fountain  by  purifying  the  stream?  When  will 
men  learn  to  think  for  themselves  ? 

My  experience  is,  throat-ail  is  not  to  be  radically  and  per- 
manently cured  in  any  case,  except  by  rectifying  first  and 
then  building  up  the  general  health  of  the  system,  and  that 
requires  time,  determination,  and  systematic  habits  of  rational 
life.  Who  thinks  differently,  and  acts  up  to  his  belief,  will 
find  himself  just  as  miserably  deceived,  as  that  unfortunate 
class  of  theologians,  who  assert,  "  It  is  no  matter  what  a  man 
believes,  if  he  is  sincere  in  his  belief."  Is  not  such  a  logician 
a  "sincere"  fool?  Clergymen's  Sore-throat  is  better  cured, 
as  a  general  rule,  in  the  continuation  of  ministerial  duty. 
My  ordinary  advice  is,  preach  every  day,  and  Sunday,  too, 
rather  than  once  a  week.  These  fitful  efforts  are  often  a 
main  cause  of  throat-ail ;  just  as  a  man  who  travels  ten  miles 
a  foot  on  Sunday,  and  on  other  days  none  at  all,  will  be 
wearied  every  Sunday  night ;  whereas,  were  he  to  walk  five, 
or  six,  or  eight  miles  every  day,  rain  or  shine,  he  would  per- 
form ten  or  twelve  on  the  Sabbath,  without  appreciable 
fatigue.  Men  of  "  the  cloth,"  why  don't  you  think  for  your- 
selves ?  Sometimes  I  think  I  am  not  altogether  a  drone  in 
creation,  because  there  are  excellent  men  now,  in  different 
parts  of  the  country,  whom  I  have  never  seen,  who,  having 
abandoned  preaching,  applied  to  me  for  advice,  and  on  being 
urged  to  resume  pastoral  charges  immediately,  as  a  means  of 
cure,  have  done  so,  and  have  steadily  recovered,  and  are  now 
bearing  "the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day."  So  that  I  am 
every  Sabbath  preaching  by  proxy,  to  many  a  listening  mul- 


HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG.  135 

titude.  It  is  not  politic  to  say  here  how  mauy  I  have  killed 
off,  or  to  inquire  if  those  referred  to  might  not  have  recov- 
ered without  doing  anything.  They  came  and  were  cured  as 
antecedent  and  sequent,  not  necessarily  as  cause  and  effect. 


HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG. 

ODR  Maker  has  constructed  the  human  machine  to  work 
easily,  healthfully,  and  well  for  seventy  years ;  and  that  is  the 
period  which  he  has  appointed  to  us,  and  which  he  has 
guaranteed  to  us,  on  the  condition  of  a  life  of  temperance, 
wisdom,  and  piety.  Why  is  it,  that  of  the  nine  millions  of 
human  beings  who,  as  the  venerable  and  distinguished  Presi- 
dent Nott  told  us,  in  his  eighty-first  year,  are  this  year  to 
swell  the  tide  of  death  to  boundless  eternity,  not  less  than 
three  millions  pass  on,  before  their  time,  their  own  suicides? 

I  propose  to  show  how  this  waste  of  human  life  can  be 
avoided,  and  how  my  readers  may  add  many  glad  years  to 
their  existence,  except  it  be  their  lot  to  perish  by  violence. 
Less  than  half  a  dozen  words  give  the  requisite  instruction ; 
less  than  half  a  dozen  words  contain  the  almost  infallible 
receipt.  Secure  a  daily  alvine  action  ;  have  one  motion 
from  the  bowels  every  twenty-four  hours.  I  may  say,  with- 
out exception,  that  nine  tenths  of  all  diseases  involve  the 
infraction  of  this  habit.  Ask  any  ten  persons  coming  into  a 
physician's  office,  if  they  have  one  regular,  daily  action  of  the 
bowels,  and  none  of  them  will  answer  "Yes."  When  a  person 
does  not  have  as  many  as  one  action  of  the  bowels  during 
each  twenty-four  hours,  he  is  said  to  be  "  costive,"  to  be  "  cons- 
tipated ;"  this  state  of  things  is  "costiveness,"  or  "constipa- 
tion :  "  these  terms  have  one  and  the  same  meaning.  The 
principle  once  stated  is  self-evident ;  and  yet,  perhaps,  the. 
majority  of  men  and  women,  who  reach  the  age  of  twenty-five 
years,  have  not  felt  the  necessity  of  this  daily  discharge. 
How  many  parents  who  read  these  lines,  can  lay  them  down 
a  moment,  and  say,  truly,  that  they  have  even  given  one 
lesson  to  their  children  as  to  the  importance  of  attending  to 
it  ?  If  you  pour  into  a  vessel  any  amount  of  water  to-day, 


136  HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG. 

however  small,  and  repeat  the  operation  daily,  that  vessel 
•will,  sooner  or  later,  overflow,  unless  each  day  as  much  is  let 
out  as  was  poured  in.  If  you  eat  a  certain  amount  of  food 
to-day,  and  nothing  passes  from  the  body,  it  must  inevitably 
become  so  full,  in  a  few  days,  that  you  cannot  swallow  any 
more  ;  that  is,  nature  with  her  instincts  comes  to  the  rescue, 
and  deprives  the  body  of  the  desire  of  food.  We  call  it  want 
of  appetite ;  we  loathe  food,  because  in  reality  there  is  no 
room  for  it.  This  want  of  appetite  is  beautifully  expressed 
by  the  medical  term  of  "  anorexia ;  "  and  in  reading  any  medi- 
cal work,  which  describes  the  symptoms  of  the  various  dis- 
eases, this  word  soon  becomes  an  old  acquaintance.  But  let 
a  man  who  has  no  appetite,  in  other  words,  who  has  swal- 
lowed so  much,  that  he  has  not  room  for  a  morsel  more,  take 
an  active  vomit,  take  a  puke,  —  for  I  want  my  most  unlearned 
country  friend  to  understand  fully  what  I  mean, — and  in  a 
few  hours  he  will  have  the  appetite  of  a  horse.  Or,  if  he 
does  not  admire  the  operation  of  "  casting  up,"  he  can  take  a 
"brisk  cathartic,"  which  will  relieve  his  gorged  carcass  in  the 
opposite  direction ;  and  "the  premises  being  evacuated"  (in 
law  phrase),  Richard  will  be  himself  again  in  a  day  or  two. 
Let  the  reader  understand,  that  I  do  not  hereby  advise  him 
to  take  a  puke  or  a  purge,  if  he  has  no  appetite,  and  yet 
wants  one.  I  am  only  stating  how  he  may  scientifically 
and  promptly  recover  his  appetite,  if  he  has  lost  it,  by  allow- 
ing constipation.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  such  an  intestinal 
abomination  of  physic,  as  Mother  Partington  would  say,  that 
I  would  rather  stay  without  an  appetite  for  a  considerable 
time,  than  to  take  a  puke  or  a  purge,  especially  as  I  cannot 
see  why  anybody  should  want  an  appetite  these  times,  when 
beef  is  thirty  cents  a  pound,  green  apples  two  dollars  a 
bushel,  and  flour  twelve  dollars  a  barrel,  such  being  the  prices 
I  have  paid  in  this  city  for  these  articles.  While  food  is 
at  these  prices,  money  is  sky-high.  Wall  street  says  it  is 
thirty-six  per  cent.  ''  Under  the  peculiar  circumstances  of 
the  case,"  I  would  really  advise  my  anorexiated  individual  to 
remain  in  statu  quo,  to  repose  on  his  reserved  rights.  In  fact, 
the  man  without  an  appetite  nowadays,  is  like  a  traveller 
without  a  trunk  ;  he  is  enviably  independent.  The  conclusion 
then  forces  itself  upon  the  understanding,  without  having  had 


HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG.  137 

the  slightest  premeditation  in  that  direction  when  the  head- 
ing of  this  article  was  penned,  before  breakfast,  this  morning, 
that  the  most  direct  and  prompt  cure  for  the  present  hard 
times  is  to  become  costive,  and  then  you  can  snap  your  finger 
and  thumb  triumphantly  at  butchers,  hucksters,  green-grocers, 
et  id  omne  genus,  —  all  that  fraternity.  But  how  to  become 
costive?  —  that  is  a  question  which  comes  directly  home  to  the 
pocket,  with  cumulative  power,  because  the  times,  like  the 
ice,  are  becoming  harder  every  hour. 

RECEIPT   FOR    BECOMING   COSTIVE. 

For  yourself,  take  a  little  opium,  or  a  few  drops  of  laud- 
anum, which  is  opium  in  a  liquid  form,  two  or  three  times 
a  day. 

If  you  want  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  economize  from 
the  baby  upward,  and  make  a  pint  of  milk  last  as  long  as  a 
quart,  give  it  a  little  paregoric  (diluted  laudanum)  every  time 
it  cries,  or  Godfrey's  Cordial. 

If  you  want  next  to  attack  your  wife,  and  anorexiate  her, 
and  yet  would  rather  do  it  on  the  sly,  find  out  if  she  has  not 
a  little  dryness  in  the  throat,  or  a  slight  hack,  or  hem,  or 
cough,  or  a  little  clearing  of  the  throat,  you  have  only  to  get 
her  one  of  those  nice  little  boxes  filled  with  any  sweetish 
lozenge  :  it  is  perfectly  immaterial  what  name  they  go  by  ;  if  it 
is  a  lozenge  at  all,  it  has  the  two  essential  requisites  —  sugar 
and  opium.  No  cough  lozenge  is  made  which  does  not  con- 
tain both  these  ingredients,  and  each  ingredient  acts  infallibly 
in  the  same  direction.  The  sugar  itself,  the  purest  loaf,  or  the 
best  syrup  which  can  be  made,  would  destroy  the  tone  of  the 
stomach,  that  is,  impair  the  appetite,  if  taken  "three  times 
a  day  before  meals,"  that  being  the  stereot3rpe  recipe  for  tak- 
ing all  patent  medicines.  Anything  sweet,  thus  taken,  acts 
directly  on  the  stomach,  and  causes  \vant  of  appetite.  Opium 
causes  want  of  appetite  in  a  more  roundabout  way ;  it  causes 
constipation,  and  that  causes  loss  of  appetite,  as  already  ex- 
plained. Therefore,  if  sugar  alone  destroys  the  appetite,  and 
opium  alone  does  the  same  thing,  both  combined,  do  it  in 
double-quick  time.  I  never  tasted  a  lozenge,  or  a  balsam,  or 
balm,  or  cough  mixture,  or  pectoral,  wrhich  had  not  both  the 
sweetish  and  a  bitterish  taste,  and  I  presume  no  one  else  ever 


138  HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG. 

did.  An  educated  druggist  would  question  a  man's  sanity, 
who  would  ask  for  a  cough  medicine  which  had  no  bitter  or 
sweet  taste  about  it.  Therefore,  you  may  set  it  down  as  an 
infallible  fact,  that  no  lozenge  or  cough  medicine  can  be  taken 
even  for  a  short  time,  without  impairing  the  appetite  and 
causing  constipation ;  that  is,  preventing  a  regular  daily 
action  of  the  bowels.  There  is,  however,  some  caution  to  be 
observed  in  the  production  of  artificial  anorexia  and  constipa- 
tion. If  kept  up  long  in  grown  persons,  a  natural  and  certain 
result  is  piles  first,  and  then  fistula,  which  last,  if  cured  at  all, 
must  be  by  the  surgeon's  knife ;  or,  my  neighbor  Bedenhamer 
will  cure  your  fistula  without  a  knife,  but  he  will  expect  a  fee, 
ranging  from  fifty  to  five  hundred  dollars.  Now  that  I  have 
come  to  count  the  cost,  I  think  it  would  be  rather  a  saving, 
after  all,  to  let  your  wife  have  her  appetite,  and  take  no 
lozenges  or  cough  remedies;  so,  after  "second  thoughts,"  I 
would  rather  advise  you  never  to  give  or  swallow  a  lozenge 
or  a  cough  drop  as  long  as  you  live,  unless  you  wish  to  be 
considered  a  candidate  for  some  lunatic  asylum. 

As  for  the  baby,  it  likes  anything  sweet;  at  least,  my  Bob 
and  our  new  little  Alice  glory  in  sweets ;  and  as  they  are  but 
a  type  of  their  kind,  I  conclude  that  all  children  like  anything 
sweetish,  and  they  will  take  the  lozenge  or  the  *  syrup  "  from 
the  father's  or  the  mother's  hand,  with  such  loving,  smiling 
confidence,  that  one  must  smile  and  love  in  return  to  witness 
it.  It  is  true,  these  things  do,  in  a  few  weeks,  give,  by 
degrees,  an  unusual  brightness  of  the  eye,  succeeded  by  water 
on  the  brain  on  the  first  attack  of  sickness ;  and  all  its  growth 
is  in  the  head,  and  its  little  body  dwindles,  and  its  eyes  stare 
out  with  a  maniacal  frenzy  or  an  idiotic  blankness,  closing 
soon  in  death  ;  but  then  you  have  saved  a  pjnt  of  milk  a  day 
for  a  good  while. 

What  I  have  written  refers  to  scientific  constipation.  I 
began  the  article  with  the  intention  of  explaining  simply  how 
persons  generally  became  costive,  and  no  more  important  ex- 
planation in  reference  to  bodily  health  has  ever  appeared  in 
the  pages  of  any  book,  nor  ever  will.  The  answer  to  the 
question,  — 


HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG.  139 


HOW   DO   PERSONS   GENERALLY   BECOME    COSTIVE? 

I  do  not  recollect  to  have  seen  in  any  publication,  popular 
or  professional,  that  I  have  ever  read,  and  yet  it  will,  come 
home  to  every  thinking  reader.  It  is  of  authenticated  and 
historical  record,  that,  in  the  last  war  between  China  and 
Great  Britain,  the  Chinese  confidently  anticipated  ultimate 
victory  by  negative  means  alone.  It  is  almost  incredible,  and 
yet  it  is  a  fact,  that  they  believed  that  if  they  cut  off  the  sup- 
plies of  rhubarb,  the  British  would  all  die,  because  that  article 
is  known  to  be  used  to  prevent  constipation,  and  if  it  could 
not  be  had,  the  British  soldiers  would  bloat  up  and  explode, 
or  at  least  die  in  consequence.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  con- 
stipation would  conquer  Sebastopol  sooner  far  than  the  allied 
army. 

HOME    ILLUSTRATION. 

To  explain  the  effects  of  constipation  upon  human  health 
and  life  by  objects  nearer  to  us  than  the  Crimea,  take  a  steam 
engine :  if  the  steam  is  not  worked  off  as  fast  as  it  accumu- 
lates in  the  boiler,  total  destruction  is  absolutely  inevitable. 
The  smallest  particles  of  dust  will,  one  by  one,  find  their  way 
from  the  vest  pocket  into  your  watch,  and  in  a  year  or  two, 
the  accumulation  will  have  been  such,  that  the  whole  machin- 
ery is  clogged,  and  it  stands  still ;  and  so  with  the  clock  on 
your  mantel,  however  closely  it  may  be  shut  and  covered 
every  time  your  tidy  house-keeper  "  dusts  the  room."  It  is 
because  there  is  a  constant  inlet,  yet  no  outlet,  and  just  as  cer- 
tainly, just  as  inevitably,  will  the  machinery  of  life  stand  still, 
sooner  or  later,  if  we  eat  daily,  and  do  not  pass  from  us  as 
daily,  the  refuse  of  what  we  eat,  after  it  has  subserved  the 
purposes  of  life.  If  what  we  eat  to-day,  and  its  refuse,  does 
not  pass  from  us  to-morrow,  it  remains  b\ut  to  clog,  and  irri- 
tate, and  inflame,  and  fester,  and  destroy,  and  rot  every  part 
with  which  it  comes  in  contact. 

How,  then,  do  persons  generally  become  costive?  How 
does  the  young  woman  pine  away  before  maturity  ?  How  does 
the  strong  young  man,  who  almost  thinks  that  nothing  can 
hurt,  wither  and  waste  and  die  long  before  his  prime  ?  How 
is  it  that  the  mass  of  men  do  not  live  out  half  their  days  ? 


140  HOW  TO  LIVE  LONG. 

These  questions  are  all  answered  by  stating  the  manner  in 
which  the  regular  functions  of  the  bowels  are  deranged. 

Order  is  Heaven's  first  law.  Regularity  is  nature's  univer- 
sal rule.  Morning,  noon,  and  night,  the  healthy  man  becomes 
hungry  at  the  usual  eating  hour  for  half  a  century ;  no  human 
machine  can  work  the  twentieth  part  so  long  without  adjust- 
ment or  repair.  At  the  accustomed  hour  the  infant  becomes 
sleepy ;  within  ten  minutes  of  the  time  does  the  regular  man 
wake  of  a  morning,  for  weeks  and  months  in  succession.  So 
is  it  with  the  desire  to  stool ;  with  almost  all,  it  comes  on 
soon  after  breakfast.  This  appears  to  be  the  most  proper 
time  ;  and,  if  not  interfered  with,  this  inclination  will  come  on 
for  a  life-time,  with  but  a  few  minutes'  variation,  and  a  health- 
ful old  age  is  the  result ;  but,  if  interfered  with,  the  founda- 
tion begins  to  be  laid  of  nine-tenths  of  all  our  maladies,  and  a 
premature  and  painful  death.  And  here  we  come  to  the 
most  important  item  in  this  article  :  — 

HOW  IS  THE  DAILY  ACTION   OF  THE   BOWELS  INTERFERED  WITH  ? 

Reader,  I  will  appeal  to  your  own  experience,  confident  ' 
that  millions  of  others  would  respond  to  it  if  questioned.  1 
will  suppose  you  to  have  good  health,  —  that  usually  after 
breakfast,  awhile,  you  experience  an  inclination  to  go  to  the 
privy  :  generally  you  do  go  promptly,  but  sometimes  you  do 
not.  You  are  reading  an  interesting  newspaper  article,  and 
you  want  to  finish  it,  or  a  chapter  of  a  novel,  or  a  political 
speech,  or  scientific  lecture ;  or  are  attending  to  an  early 
visitor,  hoping  every  moment  his  departure  ;  or  you  are  hem- 
ming a  handkerchief,  or  engaged  on  a  piece  of  embroidery  ;  or 
you  are  hurried  down  town  by  inexorable  business,  and  when 
the  desire  comes,  there  is  no  convenient  locality.  I  might 
mention  dozens  more  of  instances  which  are  presented  as  in- 
ducements to  defer  nature's  demand  for  the  moment,  and, 
before  you  are  aware  of  it,  the  desire  has  departed,  and  hours 
may  elapse  before  it  is  felt  again,  and  so  faintly  that  absorp- 
tion in  business  may  prevent  its  notice.  The  next  day  it 
comes  later  and  fainter;  and,  before  yon  are  aware  of  it,  you 
have  fallen  into  the  habit  of  passing  a  day  or  two,  or  more, 
without  attending  to  a  call  of  nature  ;  and  the  next  thing 
you  observe  the  symptoms  of  some  troublesome  disease, 


HOW  TO  LIVE  LONQ.  141 

an  illustration  of  which  I  now  give,  in  order  to  impress  upon 
the  reader's  attention  the  evils  which  may  result  from  con- 
stipation. 

A  British  soldier  was  wounded  in  the  Spanish  war  at 
Barossa,  in  1811,  and,  having  served  twenty-one  years  in 
the  army,  he  was  placed  on  the  pension  list,  which  he 
enjoyed  for  forty-one  years  in  sound  health ;  but,  lately,  on 
leaving  work,  he  became  liable  to  constipation.  At  first  his 
bowels  moved  every  other  day,  then  seldom  oftener  than 
once  a  week,  and  finally  only  once  in  four  weeks.  At  last 
his  belly  became  so  large,  that  his  trowsers  would  not  meet ; 
and  he  applied  to  Professor  Christisou  to  enable  him  to  button 
his  breeches.  He  measured  at  the  waistband  near  forty 
inches.  The  proper  means  were  used  to  procure  a  discharge, 
and  an  immense  amount  was  the  result.  On  other  medicine 
being  administered,  another  immense  discharge  was  the 
result :  still  his  belly  was  as  large  as  ever,  and  next  day  a 
third  dose  of  medicine  was  exhibited,  which  gave  an  ordinary 
discharge ;  and  on  the  third  day,  there  being  no  diminution 
*in  size,  two  tea-spoons  of  turpentine  and  twelve  table-spoons 
of  castor  oil  gave  only  two  small  passages,  and  the  abdomen 
was  as  large  as  ever.  Extreme  and  painful  means  were  then 
used  with  more  success ;  but  he  declared,  with  an  oath,  he 
never  would  submit  to  them,  and  had  rather  be  shot ;  but 
being  allowed  a  day's  rest,  he  did  submit  next  day ;  and  at 
the  end  of  a  fortnight's  treatment,  he  was  dismissed  with 
daily-acting  bowels,  in  his  seventy-fourth  year. 

The  great  practical  lesson  which  I  wish  to  inculcate,  to  be 
engraven,  as  on  a  plate  of  steel,  on  the  memory  of  children, 
and  youth,  young  men  and  women,  the  mature  and  the  gray- 
headed  :  Alloiv  nothing  short  of  fire  or  endangered  life 
to  induce  you  to  resist,  for  one  single  moment,  nature's  alvine 
call.  So  far  from  repressing  a  call  for  any  reason  short  of 
life  and  death,  you  should  go  at  the  usual  time  and  solicit, 
and  doing  so,  you  will  have  your  reward  in  a  degree  of 
hcalthfulness,  and  in  a  length  of  life,  which  very  few  are  ever 
permitted  to  enjoy. 

If  the  love  of  health  and  life,  nor  the  fear  of  inducing 
painful  disease,  cannot  induce  you  to  adopt  the  plan  I  have 
recommended,  there  is  another  argument,  which,  to  young 


142  THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDICA. 

gentlemen  and  young  ladies  may  appear  more  convincing  — 
personal  cleanliness. 

If  you  resist  a  call  of  nature,  a  degree  of  uneasiness  and 
irritation  and  heat  is  the  immediate  result.  This  heat  causes 
the  more  airy  and  watery  particles  of  the  fecal  matter,  which 
is  waiting  to  be  discharged,  to  evaporate  and  to  be  re- 
absorbed  into  the  system,  to  be  taken  into  the  blood  again, 
which  bears  the  horrible  burden  to  the  lip  of  beauty,  which 
we  kiss  with  so  much  devotion ;  and  the  very  tear-drop  of 
affection  has  mingled  with  it  what  ought  to  have  been  de- 
posited in  the  privy  a  few  hours  before,  making  the  very 
breath  unbearably  disgusting :  the  breath  of  a  costive  child 
even  is  scarcely  to  be  endured. 

Cold  feet,  sick  head-ache,  piles,  fistulas,  these,  with  scores 
of  other  diseases,  have  their  first  foundations  laid  in  constipa- 
tion, which  itself  is  infallibly  induced  by  resisting  nature's 
first  calls.  Reader,  let  it  be  your  wisdom  never  to  do  it 
again. 


THE  BIBLE  AM)   MATERIA  MEDICA. 

WHEN  the  last  hour  comes  to  me ;  when  in  that  upper 
chamber,  long  past  midnight,  the  flickering  light  burns  lone- 
ly, .and  passing  forms,  noiselessly  and  quick,  too  plainly 
show  that  death  is  there ;  when  the  bleak  winter's  wind 
whistles, from  without,  or  sends  its  melancholy  moan  through 
the  lattice,  alternating  with  the  groan  of  the  'dying ;  when  the 
softest  tread  and  the  slightest  whisper  fall  harshly  on  the  last 
sense  ;*  when  feeling,  and  sight,  and  taste,  and  speech,  all  arc 
gone,  but  immortal  thought,  the  more  immortal  as  it  shakes 
away  its  mortal  shackles,  still  lives  in  the  freshness  of  eternal 
youth,  —  in  such  an  hour,  when  this  present  body  shall  have 
been  wasted  to  a  skeleton,  this  hand  palsied  of  its  strength, 
this  eye  glazed  with  the  film  of  the  grave,  this  cheek  blanched 
with  the  last  chill,  this  forehead,  high  and  white,  and  broad 
and  clear  now,  shall  be  thickly  studded  with  the  dew-drops 
of  death,  and  this  tongue  falters  out  the  last  farewell  to  the 

*  It  is  said  that  the  hearing  is  the  last  sense  to  die. 


THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA   MEDIC  A.  143 

dear  ones  around,"  so  long  loved  and  labored  and  cared  for, — 
when  such  an  hour  comes  to  me,  I  want  to  feel  the  ineffable 
consolation,  that  something  said,  or  something  done,  some 
line  written,  some  sentence  published,  some  page  composed, 
some  sentiment  recorded,  shall  live  after  me,  which  shall  in 
its  influences  continue  to  benefit  and  bless  some  candidate 
for  the  skies,  to  the  last  hour  of  recorded  time.  Feeling  thus, 
now  and  heretofore,  I  desire  to  repeat  of  the  Bible,  that  — 

A  nation  would  be  truly  happy,  if  it  were  governed  by  no 
other  laws  than  those  of  this  blessed  book. 

It  is  so  complete  a  system  that  nothing  can  be  added  to  it 
or  taken  from  it. 

It  contains  everything  needful  to  be  known  or  done. 

It  affords  a  copy  for  a  king,  and  a  rule  for  a  subject. 

It  gives  instruction  and  counsel  to  a  senate,  authority  and 
direction  to  a  magistrate. 

It  cautions  a  witness,  requires  an  impartial  verdict  of  a  jury, 
and  furnishes  the  judge  with  his  sentence. 

It  sets  the  husband  as  lord  of  the  household,  and  the  wife 
*as  mistress  of  the  table  —  tells  him  how  to  rule,  and  her  how 
to  manage. 

It  entails  honor  to  parents,  and  enjoins  obedience  to  chil- 
dren. 

It  prescribes  and  limits  the  sway  of  the  sovereign,  the  rule 
of  the  ruler,  and  the  authority  of  the  master ;  commands  the 
subjects  to  honor,  and  the  servants  to  obey  ;  and  promises  the 
blessing  and  protection  of  the  Almighty  to  all  that  walk  by 
its  rules. 

It  gives  directions  for  weddings  and  for  burials. 

It  promises  food  and  raiment,  and  limits  the  use  of  both. 

It  points  out  a  faithful  and  eternal  guardian  to  the  depart- 
ing husband  and  father  —  tells  him  with  whom  to  leave  his 
fatherless  children,  and  in  whom  his  widow  is  to  trust ;  and 
promises  a  father  to  the  former,  and  a  husband  to  the  latter. 

It  teaches  a  man  how  to  set  his  house  in  order,  and  how  to 
make  his  will ;  it  appoints  a  dowry  for  his  wife,  and  entails 
the  right  of  the  first  born,  and  shows  how  the  younger 
branches  shall  be  left. 

It  defends  the  right  of  all,  and  reveals  vengeance  to  every 
defaulter,  overreacher,  and  oppressor. 


144  THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A. 

It  is  the  first  book,  the  best  book,  and  the  oldest  book  in 
the  world. 

It  contains  the  choicest  matter,  gives  the  best  instruction, 
affords  the  greatest  pleasure  and  satisfaction  that  ever  was 
enjoyed. 

It  contains  the  best  laws  and  most  profound  mysteries  that 
ever  were  penned ;  it  brings  the  best  of  tidings,  and  affords 
the  best  of  comforts,  to  the  inquiring  and  disconsolate. 

It  exhibits  life  and  immortality  from  everlasting,  and  shows 
the  way  to  glory. 

It  is  a  brief  recital  of  all  that  is  past,  and  a  certain  predic- 
tion of  all  that  is  to  come. 

It  settles  all  matters  in  debate,  resolves  all  doubts,  and  eases 
the  mind  and  conscience  of  all  their  scruples. 

It  reveals  the  only  living  and  true  God,  and  shows  the  way 
to  him,  and  sets  aside  all  other  gods,  and  describes  the  vanity 
of  them,  and  all  that  trust  in  such.  In  short,  it  is  a  book  of 
laws,  to  show  right  and  wrong ;  a  book  of  wisdom,  that  con- 
demns all  folly,  and  makes  the  foolish  wise  ;  a  book  of  truth, 
that  detects  all  lies  and  confutes  all  errors  ;  and  a  book  of  life, 
that  shows  the  way  from  everlasting  death. 

It  is  the  most  compendious  book  in  the  world  —  the  most 
authentic  and  the  most  entertaining  history  that  ever  was 
published. 

It  contains  the  most  ancient  antiquities,  strange  events, 
wonderful  occurrences,  heroic  deeds,  unparalleled  wars. 

It  describes  the  celestial,  terrestrial,  and  infernal  worlds, 
and  the  origin  of  the  angelic  myriads,  human  tribes,  and 
devilish  legions. 

It  will  instruct  the  accomplished  mechanic,  and  the  most 
profound  artist. 

It  teaches  the  best  rhetorician,  and  exercises  every  power  of 
the  most  skilful  arithmetician  ;  puzzles  the  wisest  anatomists, 
and  exercises  the  wisest  critic. 

It  corrects  the  vain  philosopher,  and  confutes  the  wise 
astronomer :  it  exposes  the  subtle  sophist,  and  makes  diviners 
mad. 

It  is  a  complete  code  of  laws,  a  perfect  body  of  divinity, 
an  unequalled  narrative,  a  book  of  lives,  a  book  of  travels, 
and  a  book  of  voyages. 


THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A.  145 

It  is  the  best  covenant  that  ever  was  agreed  on  —  the  best 
deed  that  ever  was  sealed  —  the  best  evidence  that  ever  was 
produced  —  the  best  will  that  ever  was  made,  and  the  best 
testament  that  ever  was  signed.  To  understand  it,  is  to 
be  wise  indeed ;  to  bo  ignorant  of  it,  is  to  be  destitute  of 
wisdom. 

It  is  the  king's  best  copy,  the  magistrate's  best  rule,  the 
house-wife's  best  guide,  the  servant's  best  directory,  and  the 
young  man's  best  companion ;  it  is  the  schoolboy's  spelling- 
book,  and  the  learned  man's  masterpiece. 

It  contains  a  choice  grammar  for  a  novice,  and  a  profound 
mystery  for  a  sage. 

It  is  the  ignorant  man's  dictionary,  and  the  wise  man's 
directory. 

It  affords  knowledge  of  witty  inventions  for  the  humorous, 
and  dark  sayings  for  the  grave,  and  is  its  own  interpreter. 

It  encourages  the  wise,  the  warrior,  the  swift,  the  over- 
comer  ;  and  promises  an  eternal  reward  to  the  excellent,  the 
conqueror,  the  winner,  and  the  prevalent.  And  that  which 
crowns  all  is,  that  the  author  is  without  partiality  and  without 
hypocrisy,  "  In  whom  is  no  variableness  or  shadow  of  turn- 
ing." 

Who  composed  the  above  description  of  the  Bible,  we  may 
never  know.  It  was  found,  nameless  and  dateless.  No 
doubt  its  author  now  is  a  blest  inhabitant  of  heaven,  as  all 
will  be  who  love  it,  as  he  seems  to  have  done. 

I  have  thus  drawn  the  attention  of  my  readers  to  a  Book 
which  some  of  them  may  have  neglected,  as  not  being  up  to 
the  age  in  which  we  live.  This  is  a  great  mistake.  Human 
nature  and  human  need  are  the  same  now  as  in  Adam's  day, 
and  will  continue  the  same  till  time  shall  be  no  more.  The 
principles  of  the  Bible  are  exceeding  broad,  and  cover  the 
universe  of  men  and  things,  reaching  to  all  conditions  of  mor- 
tal life.  If  these  principles  were  understood,  and  loved,  and 
practised,  there  would  be  no  need  of  advice  like  mine, 
because  those  principles  practised  from  youth  would  forestall 
disease:  the  Bible  reasons  of  "temperance,"  as  the  means 
of  avoiding  "judgment  to  come  ;  "  declaring  that  "there  is  no 
law  against  such  "  as  practice  it ;  and  that  coming  next  in 
importance  to  ff  knowledge,"  it  prepares  the  intelligent  for 


146  THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A. 

the  highest  enjoyment  of  human  happiness,  being,  as  it  is,  the 
foundation  of  human  health. 

With  this  "  temperance,"  reaching  to  all  things,  we  are  en- 
joined to  exercise,  there  being  "  six  days  in  which  men  ought 
to  work,"  and  w  study  to  work  with  (their)  own  hands,"  since 
"  if  any  would  not  work,  neither  should  they  eat/'  and  that 
instead  of  spending  their  time  in  discussing  the  business  of 
other  people  and  meddling  with  the  concerns  of  their  neigh- 
bors, they  "  should  work  with  quietness,  and  eat  their  own 
bread,"  it  no  doubt  being  understood,  that  it  was  not  their 
own  until  it  was  earned. 

Here,  then,  are  the  two  fundamental  rules  of  healthful  life 
laid  down  with  a  precision^  and  a  directness  which  no  intelli- 
gent mind  can  resist  —  that  by  personal  labor,  men  should  earn 
what  they  enjoy,  and  in  that  enjoyment,  they  should  practise 
temperance  with  the  guarantee  of  an  exemption  from  "judg- 
ment" and  "law,"  from  suffering  and  punishment.  Let 
every  reader  of  this  article,  then,  aim  for  that  happy,  that 
blessed  condition  of  mind,  which  receives  every  declaration 
of  the  Bible  with  the  most  implicit,  the  most  unhesitating 
confidence,  |as  meaning  just  what  it  says,  having  no  disposi- 
tion to  equivocate  or  get  around  its  plain  injunctions  by  in- 
genious conjectures,  or  "  better  renderings."  Doing  so,  you 
will  be  temperate  and  industrious  and  conscientious,  and,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  healthy  and  happy.  Go,  then,  and  give 
to  some  brother  mortal,  too  poor  to  purchase  one  for  himself, 
a  Bible,  and,  dying,  you  will,  with  one  hand  resting  on  that 
book,  the  other  pointing  heavenward,  feel  — 

"  This  little  Book  I'd  rather  own, 

Than  all  the  gold  and  gems 
That  e'er  in  monarch's  coffers  shone, 
Or  all  their  diadems. 

"  Yes  !  were  the  seas  one  chrysolite, 

The  earth  one  golden  ball, 
And  diamonds,  too,  the  stars  of  night, 
This  Book  is  worth  them  all." 

In  the  heading  of  this  article,  I  coupled  the  Bible  with 
"Materia  Medica,"  that  is,  with  a  free  translation,  all  the 
medicinal  articles  in  the  world  ;  for,  as  a  means  of  health,  it 


THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A.  147 

is  worth  them  all,  because  the  practical  observance  of  its 
principles  as  to  temperance,  industry,  and  cleanliness,  would 
secure  physical  health  to  nine-tenths  of  the  human  family,  to 
the  age  of  threescore  years  and  ten  ;  while  that  calmness  and 
equanimity  of  mind,  which  is  the  necessary  result  of  an  un- 
wavering reliance  on  the  promises  of  the  Bible,  would  secure 
a  deliberation  and  a  presence  of  mind  in  times  of  suddenly- 
threatened  calamity,  which  would  make  casualties  requiring 
surgical  aid  of  very  rare  occurrence.  The  man  or  woman 
who  is  a  Christian  from  sterling  principle,  founded  on  a  ha- 
bitual reading  and  study  of  the  Scriptures,  is  not  alarmed  from 
his  propriety  in  the  battle  and  the  breeze,  in  the  pestilence 
of  midnight,  and  the  crashing  fury  of  a  noonday  tornado. 
He  feels,  abidingly,  my  Father  is  there  :  "  of  whom  shall  I  be 
afraid?  "  With  such  a  trust,  he  can  calmly  look  around  him 
at  a  moment  when  death's  missiles  fly  thick  as  hailstones,  and 
choose,  if  any,  the  best  way  of  escape.  He  feels,  if  he  es- 
capes, it  is  well ;  if  not,  he  is  prepared  to  go  to  his  Father. 

Does  novel  reading  have  that  effect  ?  Does  it  give  bravery 
to  meet  life's  stern  realities,  to  breast  the  storm  in  the  hour 
of  shipwreck,  or  dare  the  almost  certain  death  of  the  chamber 
of  festering  pestilence  and  the  rankling  plague?  O,  no! 
the  poor  creature,  if  strength  is  left,  vies  with  the  whirlwind's 
flight ;  or,  more  probably,  is  petrified  with  fear,  and  stands 
aghast,  immovable  as  a  monument  of  stone,  or  falls  to  the 
earth  with  more  than  an  infant's  helplessness. 

Many  of  the  great  rneu  of  the  world  have  given  their  testi- 
mony of  the  value  of  the  Bible,  not  only  as  enabling  them  to 
meet  with  fortitude  the  sickness,  the  trials,  the  disappoint- 
ments, bereavements,  and  calamities  of  life,  but  their  actions 
and  words,  in  the  last  trying  hour  of  human  existence,  have 
given  conclusive  testimony  that  its  lessons  and  its  revelations 
are  sweeter  than  the  odors  of  "  Araby  the  Blest." 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  the  greatest  novelist  of  his  age.  Be- 
fore it  was  ascertained  who  wrote  the  books  which  afterwards 
gave  him  such  renown,  he  was  called  "The  Great  Unknown  ;  " 
but  in  life's  latest  hour,  when  the  gathering  gloom  of  the 
grave  was  hovering  over  him,  and  weeping  friends  and  kin- 
dred were  watching  life's  feeblest  flickerings,  he  brightened 
up  a  little,  and  said  to  the  watcher,  "  Bring  me  the  Book." 
"  What  book  ?  "  said  his  son-in-law.  Captain  Lockhart.  "  There 


148  THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  MEDIC  A. 

is  but  one  Book,"  said  the  dying  man,  as  he  pointed  to  the 
Bible.  And  truly,  "The  Bible,"  the  literal  meaning  of 
which  is,  "  The  Book  of  Books,"  is  worth  more  than  all  others 
besides.  Men's  love  of  science  may  enable  them  to  handle 
the  dead  body  with  composure,  —  to  cut  limb  from  limb 
and  joint  from  joint.  Professor  Kokitansky,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  and  learned  of  living  physicians,  has,  as  it  is  com- 
puted, in  pursuing  his  investigations  of  the  conditions  of 
the  human  frame  in  health  and  disease,  examined  not  less 
than  thirty-five  thousand  bodies  of  dead  humanity.  But 
these  things  do  not  appall  the  physician  ;  he  looks  at  them 
in  a  scientific  point  of  view.  But  all  this  applies  to  cases 
where  death  has  done  his  work  on  the  stranger  victim.  But 
change  the  scenes ;  go  back  an  hour,  let  the  victim  still  have 
the  breath  of  life,  and  let  the  bystander  be  that  victim's 
physician,  and  the  difference  is  wider  than  daylight  and  dark- 
ness. Responsibility  is  summoned,  sympathy  is  appealed  to, 
professional  skill  is  invoked,  and  while  the  heart  weeps  for 
the  dying  fellow-mortal,  the  intellect  blushes  for  its  own 
helplessness.  But  to  come  more  nearly  to  the  point :  there 
is  another  difference  in  the  dying  chamber,  and  it  is  infinitely 
wide  ;  the  difference  in  dying  with  a  Bible,  and  without  one. 
I  have  seen  them  both,  many  a  time  and  oft,  and  have  as  often 
felt,  it  is  worth  the  effort  of  a  lifetime  to  be  able  to  die  well. 
By  dying  well,  I  mean,  having  a  firm  reliance  on  the  truth  of 
the  Bible,  that  reliance  having  been  made  up  of  the  myriads 
of  convictions  which  have  occurred  in  a  previous  life  of  Chris- 
tian rectitude.  To  witness  such  a  death  is  glorious;  it  is  a 
heart-lesson  for  good,  which  a  century  cannot  erase.  But  on 
that  other  picture,  the  poor  dying  creature  who  has  no  Bible, 
no  hope,  no  God,  who  feels  himself  dying,  and  yet  says, 
"Doctor,  I  won't  die!  get  a  carriage  for  me,  and  I'll  soon 
be  well  as  ever"  —  and  then  he  talked  to  me  of  his  plantation, 
of  his  plans  for  clearing  more  ground,  and  the  estimated  pro- 
duct of  each  additional  acre.  "  Send  for  my  factor,"  said  he, 
"and  tell  him  to  bring  my  account  current." 
"  But,  my  friend,  you  may  die  to-night." 
"I  tell  you,  doctor,  you  don't  understand  my  case." 
I  sent  for  the  factor,  and,  for  the  satisfaction  of  those  at 
home,  whom  he  was  never  to  see  again,  I  sent  for  the  minister 
too,  who,  like  the  good  man  that  he  was,  came  right  away ; 


THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  ME  DIG  A.  149 

but  ho  said,  "It  is  too  late,"  offered  a  prayer,  and  left  us 
alone.  Scarcely  had  he  gone,  when  the  factor  came.  The 
very  sight  of  the  long  bill  of  sales  and  per  contra  waked  up 
the  last  slumbering  energies  of  the  godless  one  ;  and,  after  an 
examination,  detecting  an  error  of  a  few  cents  in  an  account 
involving  many  thousands  of  dollars,  he  handed  it  for  rectifica- 
tion, turned  over,  and  died  ! 

But  in  the  progress  of  disease,  the  Bible  is  the  best  emol- 
lient. It  makes  the  timid  lion-hearted,  and  nerves  the  wasted 
body  with  a  strength  almost  superhuman.  "  I  have  preached," 
said  the  lamented  Spencer,  "and  when  I  reached  home, 
I  found  my  boots  part  filled  with  blood ; "  and  yet  so  en- 
gaged was  he  in  his  Master's  work,  that  none  of  all  his 
loving  and  loved  people  thought  that  he  was  ill.  At  a  later 
hour  some  one  said,  "Your  pains  must  be  agonizing." 
"Agony!  it  is  far  short  of  what  I  feel."  Yet  not  a  mur- 
mur, not  a  complaint,  ever  escaped  the  good  man's  lips. 

Many  people  say  that  old  age  requires  a  stimulant ;  that  a 
little  wine  or  brandy,  "now  and  then,"  would  be  of  great 
service,  would  brace  up  the  system,  and  supply  a  vigor  not 
to  be  attained  in  any  other  way.  Whatever  may  be  the 
advantages  of  stimulants  to  the  aged,  I  know  that  my  moth- 
er's mother  took  none  ;  and  yet,  beyond  the  age  of  threescore 
and  ten,  she  had  the  cheerfulness  of  a  girl  in  her  teens.  I 
cannot  recollect,  that,  during  all  the  years  of  our  childhood, 
we  ever  paid  her  a  visit  that  we  did  not  find  the  little  stand 
at  her  right  hand,  and  Scott's  family  Bible  upon  it,  most 
always  open,  or  spread  upon  her  lap.  She  would  knit  awhile  ; 
then  read  a  verse  or  two,  with  its  explanation.  And  for 
every  occurrence  of  life,  whether  of  gladness  or  gloom,  she 
had  some  pertinent  Scripture  expression  that  seemed  to  have 
a  dovetail  fit,  as  a  cabinet-maker  would  say,  —  I  myself  having 
been  a  kind  of  amateur  in  that  line,  at  such  odd  times  as  study 
was  found  a  bore,  and  that  the  mind  would  not  work  at 
orthography,  etymology,  syntax,  and  prosody ;  for  so  early 
as  then  I  had  observed,  when  I  was  not  in  a  studying  mood, 
there  was  no  use  in  trying.  I  never  could  do  a  thing  when  I 
did  not  feel  like  it.  Reader,  make  a  note  of  this,  and  it  will 
do  you  and  the  world  some  good  hereafter.  Be  at  it  when 
the  fit  is  on  you.  Then  it  is  most  likely  to  be  done  well,  and 
what  is  worth  doing  at  all  is  worth  doing  well. 


150  THE  BIBLE  AND  MATERIA  ME  DIG  A. 

"As  I  was  saying,"  Hannah  Pyke  was  a  cheerful  old 
woman,  and  her  love  of  the  Bible,  and  of  doing  good,  made 
her  so.  How  many  and  many  a  dollar  of  hers  went  to 
"  Princeton,"  a  name  as  dear  to  her  as  Jerusalem  to  a  Jew ! 
How  many  a  bank  note  stuck  to  a  minister's  hand  when  she 
bade  them  good  bye!  Reader,  they  say  "good  bye,"  "out 
west."  If  you  were  to  say  adieu  out  there,  they  would  think 
something  was  wrong  in  the  upper  story.  How  many  a  poor 
preacher  went  away  from  her  hospitable  home,  with  a  coat  or 
vest,  or  other  garment,  that  he  did  not  bring  with  him,  nor 
knew  it  was  among  his  worldly  goods,  until,  with  delighted 
surprise,  it  was  observed  to  be  among  the  contents  of  the  old 
"saddlebags,"  as  they  were  spread  out  on  the  floor  —  husband 
and  wife  and  little  ones  all  around  in  a  ring,  each  one  hoping 
father  had  brought  an  apple,  or  a  cake  of  sugar,  or  a  picture- 
book,  or  something  else  !  How  many  of  such  presents  were 
made  can  only  be  known  at  the  judgment,  where  both  giver 
and  receiver  have  long  since  gone.  There  were  two  other 
things  my  grandmother  read  occasionally.  She  took  the 
"  Missionary  Herald  "  from  the  start,  and  that  square,  dumpy, 
queer  kind  of  a  newspaper,  the  "  Boston  Recorder,"  then  the 
only  religious  newspaper  in  America.  The  Bible  and  her 
own  experience  told  her  what  God  was  doing  for  her.  These 
two  papers  told  her  what  lie  was  doing  for  the  world  outside, 
and  what  the  young  "  studients,"  as  she  used  to  call  them, 
were  doing,  whom  she  had  placed  in  the  ministry,  in  whole 
or  in  part ;  a  few  of  whom  have  had  no  equals.  They,  too, 
now  gone,  with  the  world's  largest  honors  and  most  affection- 
ate remembrances  upon  them !  Now,  with  these  instances, 
which,  as  it  were,  have  grown  up  before  my  eyes,  how  can  I 
do  otherwise  than  to  recommend  to  every  young  man  and 
woman,  who  wishes  to  be  healthful  in  mature  life,  and  to  pass 
on  to  a  cheerful  and  painless  old  age,  the  reading  of  the  Bible 
as  a  means  of  health?  Some  people,  I  know,  will  turn  up 
their  noses  with  contemptuousness  at  such  an  idea :  but  such 
should  remember,  that  sometimes  contempt  is  mutual ;  and 
then,  again,  their  experiences  are  all  on  one  side.  I  give 
one  fact  out  of  a  million,  and  I  know  that  the  sentiment  is 
true,  from  a  wide  observation.  It  is  a  moral  demonstration, 
as  conclusive  and  as  clear  as  any  of  Euclid's,  and  the  sneers 


HOW  PEOPLE   TAKE  COLD.  151 

of  a  universe  cannot  bring  shame  to  my  face  when  I  know 
that  I  am  right.  I  might  go  further,  and  give  a  "  recipe  "  for 
reading  the  Bible  with  a  view  to  its  healthful  influences,  but 
for  the  charge  of  invading  my  minister's  premises,  to  whose 
discourse,  on  the  first  Sabbath  in  January,  the  world  is  in- 
debted for  any  of  good  there  may  be  in  this  tedious  article. 
Still,  I  will  lay  aside  a  doctor's  dignity,  and  as  "an  humble 
friend  of  mankind"  in  general,  and  of  the  young  in  particular, 
I  will  make  a  suggestion  as  to  the  best  way  of  reading  the 
Bible  with  a  view  of  a  daily  gaining  influence  over  the  princi- 
ples and  practices  of  our  lives.  Do  not  make  an  effort  to 
read  it  all  through  in  a  year.  Do  not  resolve  you  will  read 
two  or  three  chapters  a  day,  nor  one,  necessarity  ;  but  do 
resolve  that  you  will  read  any  number  of  verses,  from  one  to 
ten,  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  and  think  about  what  you 
have  read  all  the  time  you  are  dressing  ;  and  get  into  a  habit 
of  fixing  the  mind  on  some  one  sentiment  advanced,  to  be 
thought  of  several  times  during  the  day.  A  day  will  seldom 
pass,  that  observation  will  not  confirm  that  sentiment ;  and 
thus  every  day  will  add  an  argument  for  Bible  truth,  until, 
before  you  are  aware  of  it,  your  principles  and  your  practices 
will  be  shaped  by  its  dew-distilling  teachings,  and  every  word 
of  it  will  be  received  with  that  child-like  fearlessness  which 
none  but  an  heir  of  immortality  can  ever  know,  and  the  pos- 
session of  which  confidence  is  worth  more  than  all  worlds. 


HOW   PEOPLE  TAKE  COLD. 

NOT  by  tumbling  into  the  river,  and  draggling  home  wet  as 
a  drowned  rat;  not  by  being  pitched  into  the  mud,  or  spilled 
out  in  the  snow  in  sleighing  time  ;  not  by  walking  for  hours, 
over  shoe-top,  in  mud ;  not  by  soaking  in  the  rain  without 
an  umbrella ;  not  by  scrubbing  the  floor  until  the  unname- 
able  sticks  to  you  like  a  wet  rag ;  not  by  hoeing  potatoes 
until  you  are  in  a  lather  of  sweat ;  not  by  trying  to  head  a 
pig  in  midwinter,  and  induce  him  to  run  the  other  way  —  for 
he  will  not  do  any  such  thing ;  not  by  steaming  over  the 
wash-tub ;  not  by  essaying  to  teach  Biddy  to  make  mince  pies 


152  HOW  PEOPLE   TAKE  COLD. 

for  Christmas,  when  you  do  not  know  how  yourself,  and  then 
worrying  yourself  into  a  perspiration  because  the  pies  stuck 
to  the  pan  and  came  out  in  a  muss,  forgetting  that  pie-pans, 
like  people,  are  rather  better  for  a  little  greasing,  alias  soft- 
soap,  —  these  are  not  the  things  which  give  people  colds ;  and 
yet  people  are  all  the  time  telling  us  how  they  "  caught  their 
death  by  exposure."  Horace  Greeley  once  said,  "O  for  a 
leisure  week  to  read  books  1  "  Horace  was  green  then  —  some 
say  he  is  now  —  but  I  rather  guess  not :  he  is  great,  specially 
on  people  "  of  the  color  of  black,"  as  our  three-year  old  once 
described  a  born  African.  Greeley  has  not  derived  his  great- 
ness from  books,  and  now  he  is  older,  perhaps  he  does  not 
sigh  for  a  week  of  leisure  to  read  books :  at  least,  I  do  not. 
All  the  leisure  I  want  is  to  think  and  play  with  the  children 
—  Bob  and  our  new  little  Alice,  for  example.  Books  do  not 
feed  me  as  of  yore.  Sure,  I  must  be  getting  old,  or  hard  to 
please.  Books,  somehow  or  other,  do  not  seem  to  me  to  meet 
the  wants  of  the  age  ;  they  are  written  too  much  with  a  view 
to  make  a  sensation  or  money,  and  consequently  nine  out  of 
ten  fail  to  do  either ;  the  only  result  being  to  elucidate  their 
authors  into  obscurity.  Somehow  or  other,  the  mind  wan- 
ders. I  have  to  start  on  a  journey  of  eight  hundred  miles 
and  back,  and  I  must  come  back  to  colds  ;  and,  speaking  of 
the  emptiness  of  books,  I  was  wondering  if,  "in  the  whole 
course  of  my  life,"  I  had  ever  seen  defined,  in  clear,  decisive 
phrase,  in  any  book,  "the  place  where,  and  the  time  when," 
a  man  takes  a  cold.  Pat,  when  asked,  one  wintry  day,  what 
he  would  take  to  climb  up  the  court-house  steeple  and  remain 
there,  said,  "  I  would  take  a  cold,  yer  honor."  Sawney,  who 
stood  by,  said  he  wrould  take  a  dollar.  That  is  about  the 
nearest  description  I  have  seen,  in  print,  as  to  the  locality 
best  adapted  for  taking  a  cold ;  but  that  was  a  falsity,  not  a 
fact.  The  seeds  of  a  million  deaths  of  the  beautiful,  the  hon- 
ored, and  the  good,  will  be  sown  this  year  by  indifference  to 
the  statement  I  am  going  to  make  in  reference  to  the  time  and 
manner  of  taking  colds.  I  will  not  now  perplex  the  reader 
with  a  disquisition  on  the  physiology  of  colds,  but  will  simply 
bring  to  mind  what  any  reader  will  recognize  as  an  old  but 
forgotten  acquaintance. 

The  TIME  for  taking  cold  is  after  your  exercise;  the  PLACE 
i#  in  your  own  house,  or  office,  or  counting-room. 


HOW  PEOPLE   TAKE   COLD.  153 

It  is  not  the  act  of  exercise  which  gives  the  cold,  hut  it  \s 
the  getting  cool  too  quick  after  exercising.  For  example, 
you  walk  very  fast  to  get  to  the  railroad  station,  or  to  the 
ferry,  or  to  catch  an  omnibus,  or  to  make  time  for  an  appoint- 
ment ;  your  mind  being  ahead  of  you,  the  body  makes  an  over 
effort  to  keep  up  with  it ;  and  when  you  get  to  the  desired 
spot,  you  raise  your  hat,  and  find  yourself  in  a  perspiration  ; 
you  take  a  seat,  and  feeling  quite  comfortable  as  to  tempera- 
ture, you  begin  to  talk  to  a  friend,  or,  if  a  New  Yorker,  to 
read  a  newspaper,  and  before  you  are  aware  of  it,  you  expe- 
rience a  sensation  of  chilliness,  and  the  thing  is  done.  You 
look  around  to  see  where  the  cold  comes  from,  and  find  a  win- 
dow open  near  you,  or  a  door,  or  that  you  have  taken  a  seat 
at  the  forward  part  of  the  car,  and  it,  moving  against  the 
wind,  a  strong  draft  is  made  through  the  crevices.  Or,  may 
be  you  meet  a  friend  at  a  street  corner,  who  wanted  a  loan, 
and  was  quite  complimentary  —  almost  loving.  You  did  not 
like  to  be  rude  in  the  delivery  of  the  two-lettered  monosylla- 
ble, and  while  you  were  contriving  to  be  truthful,  polite,  and 
safe,  all  at  the  same  time,  on  comes  the  chilly  feeling  from  a 
raw  wind  at  the  street  corner,  or  the  slosh  of  mud  and  water 
in  which,  for  the  first  time,  you  notice  yourself  standing. 

Young  ladies  take  their  colds  in  grandly  dark  parlors,  — 
unused  and  unfired  for  a  week.  Warm  enough  were  they  — 
almost  too  warm  —  in  the  gay,  sun-shiny  street  without,  and 
that  parlor  felt  comfortably  cool  at  first ;  but  the  last  curl  of 
the  visited  would  not  dangle  satisfactorily,  and  while  compell- 
ing it  (young  ladies  now-a-days  making  it  a  point  of  princi- 
ple not  to  be  thwarted  in  anything,  not  even  in  wedding  rich 
Tom,  to  please  the  old  folks,  when  they  love  poor  Dick,  and 
intend  to  please  themselves) ,  while  conquering  that  beauti- 
ful but  unruly  curl,  the  visitor  makes  an  unexpected  meeting 
with  a  chill  which  calls  her  to  the  —  grave. 

I  cannot  give  further  space  to  illustrations  to  arrest  the  at- 
tention of  the  careless,  but  will  reiterate  the  principle  for  the 
thoughtful  and  observant :  — 

GET    COOL   SLOWLY. 

After  any  kind  of  exercise,  do  not  s^and  a  moment  at  a 
street  corner  for  anybody  or  anything ;  nor  at  an  open  door 


154  HOW  PEOPLE   TAKE  COLD. 

or  window.  When  you  have  been  exercising  in  any  way 
whatever,  winter  or  summer,  go  home  at  once,  or  to  some 
sheltered  place  ;  and  however  warm  the  room  may  seem  to 
be,  do  not  at  once  pull  off  your  hat  and  cloak,  but  wait 
a  while,  —  some  five  minutes  or  more,  —  and  lay  aside  one  at 
a  time  :  thus  acting,  a  cold  is  impossible.  Notice  a  moment : 
when  you  return  from  a  brisk  walk,  and  enter  a  warm  room, 
raise  your  hat,  and  the  forehead  will  be  moist ;  let  the  hat 
remain  a  few  moments,  and  feel  the  forehead  again,  and  it 
will  be  dry,  showing  that  the  room  is  actually  cooler  than 
your  body,  and  that,  with  your  out-door  clothing  on,  you 
have  cooled  off  full  soon.  Many  of  the  severest  colds  I  have 
known  men  to  take  were  the  result  of  sitting  down  to  a  meal 
in  a  cool  room,  after  a  walk ;  or,  being  engaged  in  writing, 
let  the  fire  go  out,  and  their  first  admonition  of  it  was  that 
creeping  chilliness  which  is  the  ordinary  forerunner  of  a  se- 
vere cold.  Persons  have  often  lost  their  lives  by  writing  or 
reading  in  a  room  where  there  was  no  fire,  although  the 
weather  outside  was  rather  uncomfortable.  Sleeping  in  rooms 
long  unused  has  destroyed  the  life  of  many  a  visitor  and  friend. 
Our  splendid  parlors,  and  our  nice  "spare  rooms,"  help  to 
enrich  many  a  doctor.  The  cold  sepulchral  parlors  of  New 
York,  from  May  until  November,  bring  disease,  not  only  to 
visitors,  but  to  the  visited ;  for,  coming  in  from  domestic 
occupations,  or  from  the  hurry  of  dressing,  the  heat  of  the 
body  is  higher  than  natural,  and  having  no  cloak  or  hat  on  in 
going  in  to  meet  a  visitor,  and  having,  in  addition,  but  little 
vitality,  in  consequence  of  the  very  sedentary  nature  of  town 
life,  there  is  but  very  little  capability  of  resistance,  and  a 
chill  and  cold  is  the  result. 

But  how  to  cure  a  cold  promptly?  —  that  is  a  question  of  life 
and  death  to  multitudes.  There  are  two  methods  of  univer- 
sal application:  first,  obtain  a  bottle  of  cough  mixture,  or  a 
lot  of  cough  candy  —  any  kind  will  do  :  in  a  day  or  two  3-011 
\v\\]feel  better,  and  in  high  spirits  ;  you  will  be  charmed  with 
the  promptness  of  the  medicine,  make  a  mule  of  yourself  by 
giving  your  certificate  of  the  valuable  remedy,  and  in  due 
course  of  time,  another  certificate  will  be  made  for  your  ad- 
mission, foot  foremost,  into  "Greenwood." 

The  other  remedy  is,  consult  a  respectable  resident  phy- 
sician. 


POISONS.  155 


POISONS. 

WE  all  have  a  great  horror  of  being  poisoned,  without 
exactly  understanding  what  it  is. 

Poison  is  a  disorganization  of  flesh,  or  blood,  or  both. 

Poisons  are  of  two  kinds :  one  the  result  of  medicinal 
agents  taken  into  the  stomach  or  circulation ;  the  other,  the 
result  of  bites  or  stings  of  living  creatures. 

I  will  now  state  two  ideas,  which,  if  generally  known  and 
remembered ,  would  save  thousands  of  lives  every  year. 

If  you  have  swallowed  a  poison,  whether  laudanum,  ar- 
senic, or  other  thing  poisonous,  put  a  table-spoonful  of  ground 
mustard  in  a  glass  of  water,  cold  or  warm ;  stir  and  swal- 
low quickly ;  and  instantaneously  the  contents  of  the  stomach 
will  be  thrown  up,  not  allowing  the  poisonous  substance  time 
to  be  absorbed  and  taken  into  the  blood ;  and  as  soon  as 
vomiting  ceases,  swallow  the  whites  of  one  or  two  new  eggs, 
for  the  purpose  of  antagonizing  any  small  portion  of  the  poi- 
son which  may  have  been  left  behind.  Let  the  reader  re- 
member the  principle,  which  is  to  get  the  poison  out  of  you 
as  soon  as  possible.  There  are  other  things  which  will  pro- 
duce a  speedy  emetic  effect,  but  the  advantage  of  mustard  is, 
it  is  always  at  hand,  it  acts  instantaneously,  without  any 
after  medicinal  effects. 

The  use  of  the  white  of  an  egg  is,  that,  although  it  does  not 
nullify  all  poisons,  it  antagonizes  a  larger  number  than  any 
other  agent  so  readily  attainable. 

But  while  taking  the  mustard,  or  egg,  send  for  a  physician  : 
these  are  .advised  in  order  to  save  time,  as  the  difference  of 
twenty  minutes  is  often  death. 

CURE    OF   BITES    AJTD    STINGS. 

Almost  all  these  are  destructive  from  their  acid  nature  : 
consequently  the  cure  is  an  alkali.  Spirits  of  hartshorn  is  one 
of  the  strongest,  and  in  almost  every  house ;  and  you  have 
only  to  pour  out  some  in  a  teacup,  and  dabble  it  on  the 
wound  with  a  common  rag :  relief  is  almost  instantaneous. 
But  suppose  you  have  no  hartshorn;  well,  then,  saleratus  is 
an  alkali ;  everv  trifling,  lazy  cook  in  the  land  has  it ;  we  are 


156  DEBT  AND  DEATH. 

daily  eating  ourselves  into  the  grave  by  its  extravagant  use 
—  and  the  use  of  half  a  thimbleful  a  week  is  extravagant. 
Moisten  it  with  water,  and  use  as  the  hartshorn.  If  you  have 
no  saleratus  or  soda,  pour  a  teacup  of  boiling  water  on  as 
much  wood  ashes,  stir  it,  and  in  a  few  moments  you  will 
have  an  alkali.  The  ley  of  ashes  will  answer  a  good  purpose 
while  the  physician  is  coming.  Remember  the  principle  :  the 
bite  is  an  acid,  the  cure  is  an  alkali. 

Have  we  not,  before  now,  looked  with  wonder  on  the  old 
negro  who  ran  out,  when  the  wasp's  sting  made  us  "  holler," 
caught  up  "  three  kinds  "  of  weed,  rubbed  the  part  well,  and  in 
five  minutes  we  were  happy  in  the  complete  relief?  But  why 
"three"  kinds  of  weed?  Why,  in  the  first  place,  you  know 
"  three  "  and  all  its  multiples  are  mysterious  numbers ;  and 
then,  again,  you  can  scarcely  gather  up  three  kinds  of  plants 
anywhere,  one  of  which  will  not  have  more  or  less  of  alkali 
in  it.  If  men  were  only  to  gather  up  principles  instead  of 
specifications,  how  much  easier  it  would  be  to  know  a  great 
deal,  and  to  apply  our  knowledge  successfully  to  the  practical 
purposes  of  life  1 


DEBT   AND   DEATH. 

GENERAL  JACKSON  once  said,  that  any  man  who  traded  on 
a  borrowed  capital  ought  to  break.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I  con- 
sider him  a  radically  dishonest  man  who  embarks  in  business 
wholly  on  a  borrowed  capital,  because  he  is  willing  to  endan- 
ger his  friend  for  the  chances  of  his  own  profit :  he  cannot 
lose,  but  his  friend  may.  James  Harper,  one  of  the  best  and 
purest  men  I  ever  knew,  a  Virginia  gentleman  of  the  old 
school,  whose  heart  was  welling  up  unceasingly  with  human 
kindness  to  all  around  him,  once  said  to  a  gentleman  who 
counted  his  fortune  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  who  vol- 
untarily offered  to  be  drawn  upon  for  any  amount,  "  I  can- 
not consent  to  make  a  fortune  at  the  risk  of  my  friend" 
A  mercantile  gentleman,  who  was  honor  personified,  Joseph 
Stephens,  once  said  to  me,  "  I  leave  my  bed  of  a  morning 
bathed  in  perspiration,  in  the  agony  of  device  for  meeting  the 
engagements  of  the  day."  We  all  know  that  the  fear  of  not 


DEBT  AND   DEATH.  157 

being  able  to  meet  pecuniary  engagements  is  a  frequent  cause 
of  insanity  and  suicide  to  men  of  refinement  and  a  high  sense 
of  honor,  while  thousands  are  wasting  away  around  us  under 
the  harnissiug  pressure  of  debt.  The  temper  is  uneven,  —  at 
one  time  sad,  at  another  almost  unendurably  irritable  ;  the 
appetite  is  variable,  if  any  at  all ;  the  nights  are  restless,  the 
sleep  unrefreshing ;  gladness  hies  from  home,  and  silent 
gloom  pervades  the  fireside  circle,  thus  verifying  the  Scrip- 
ture assertion,  that  they  who  hasten  to  be  rich  shall  pierce 
themselves  through  with  many  sorrows.  •«•' 

In  view,  then,  of  its  health-destroying  influences,  I  may, 
very  properly,  give  the  admonition,  avoid  debt;  shun  it  as 
you  would  the  pestilence  that  walketh  in  darkness,  or  the 
plague  that  wasteth  at  noonday  ;  consider  it  your  mortal  ene- 
my —  the  enemy  of  your  body,  your  health,  your  happiness, 
your  soul  —  the  enemy  of  your  wife,  your  children,  and  every 
kindred  tie. 

Take  almost  any  business  man,  and  he  will  tell  you,  in  more 
than  three  cases  out  of  four,  that  he  has  lost  more  by  bad 
debts  than  he  is  now  worth.  It  is  a  monstrous  fallacy,  that 
"  if  a  man  expects  to  become  rich  he  must  go  in  debt."  The 
sentiment  originated  in  the  heart  of  a  rogue.  Debt  is  not  the 
policy  of  the  most  successful  men. 

I  adopt,  with  all  my  heart,  a  paraphrase  of  a  favorite  ex- 
pression of  President  Lindsley,  which  I  have  treasured  in  my 
own  mind  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  "  I  dictate  to 
no  man,  and  allow  no  man  to  dictate  to  me."  I  go  in  debt  to 
no  man ;  I  allow  no  man  to  go  in  debt  to  me.  Who  can  for 
a  moment  doubt  that,  if  this  were  the  prevalent  sentiment  and 
practice  of  the  time,  half  of  all  the  sorrow  that  now  palls 
humanity's  heart  would  be  instantaneously  annihilated  ?  Men 
would  not  get  on  quite  so  fast  in  their  improvements,  in 
building  palatial  residences  and  opening  splendid  farms  ;  but 
they  would  get  along  more  surely,  and,  in  the  end,  lie  down 
to  die  with  a  happier  heart  by  far,  and  have  no  quenchless 
remorses  to  imbitter  the  last  moments  of  life.  Mr.  Everett 
states,  in  his  memoir  of  Peter  C.  Brooks,  of  Boston,  who  died 
worth  millions,  "that  Mr.  B.  abstained,  as  a  general  rule,  from 
speculative  investments.  '  His  maxim  was,  that  the  whole 
value  of  wealth  consisted  in  the  personal  independence  which 


158  DEBT  AND  DEATH. 

it  secured  ;  and  he  was  never  inclined  to  put  that  good,  once 
won,  again  at  hazard,  in  the  mere  quest  of  extraordinary  addi- 
tions to  his  superfluity.'  He  never  made  purchases  of  unpro- 
ductive real  estate,  on  a  calculation  of  future  enhanced  value. 
He  never,  directly  or  indirectly,  took  more  than  legal  inter- 
est. He  could  have  doubled  his  immense  fortune  had  he  been 
willing  to  violate  this  rule.  It  is  mentioned  that  he  believed, 
and  often  said,  that,  '  in  the  long  run,'  six  per  cent  is  as  much 
as  the  bare  use  of  money  is  worth  in  this  country.  It  was 
another  of  his  principles,  never  himself  to  borrow  money. 
What  he  could  not  compass  by  present  means  was  to  him  in- 
terdicted. It  is  doubtful  whether,  with  but  a  single  excep- 
tion, Mr.  Brooks's  name  was  ever  subscribed  to  a  note  of 
hand.  He  shunned  every  transaction,  however  brilliant  the 
promise  of  future  gain,  which  required  the  use  of  borrowed 
means."  Mr.  Everett  well  remarks  :  — 

"The  bold  spirit  of  modern  enterprise  will  deride,  as  nar- 
row-minded, so  cautious  a  maxim ;  but  the  vast  number  of 
individuals  and  families  actually  ruined  by  its  non-observance 
—  to  say  nothing  of  the  heaven-daring  immoralities  so  often 
brought  to  light,  to  which  men  are  tempted  in  the  too  great 
haste  to  be  rich  —  go  far  to  justify  Mr.  Brooks's  course.  It  is 
highly  probable  that,  in  the  aggregate,  as  much  property  is 
lost  and  sacrificed  in  the  United  States,  by  the  abuse  of 
credit,  as  is  gained  by  its  legitimate  use.  With  respect  to 
the  moral  mischiefs  resulting  from  some  of  the  prevailing 
habits  of  our  business  community, — the  racking  cares  and 
corroding,  uncertain  ties,  the  mean  deceptions  and  the  meas- 
ureless frauds  to  which  they  sometimes  lead, — language  is 
inadequate  to  do  justice  to  the  notorious  and  appalling  truth." 

With  all  his  rare  excellencies  of  Christian  character,  there 
were  few  men  wiser  in  the  world's  wisdom  than  the  late  Rev. 
Dr.  Milner.  His  long  practice  at  the  bar,  and  his  experience 
as  a  politician,  in  and  out  of  Congress,  peculiarly  qualified 
him  to  judge  of  human  nature  and  of  the  tendency  of  things, 
and  to  give  prudent  advice.  "  My  next-door  neighbor  is  in 
debt.  Upwards  of  two  years  ago  he  borrowed  from  me  two 
hundred  dollars,  and  immediately  afterwards  one  hundred  and 
ten  more.  The  latter  sum  he  engaged  to  return  in  twenty- 
four  hours.  I  have  never  received  a  shilling  of  these  sums  in 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  159 

money ;  but  as  he  is  a  bookseller,  I  have,  at  his  urgent  solici- 
tation, taken  books  of  him  to  the  amount  of  nearly  two  thirds 
of  the  demand.  His  note  for  the  balance  is  now  due,  and  he 
urges  me  to  take  "  Viner's  Abridgment,"  which  satisfies  the 
debt,  except  thirty  or  forty  dollars. 

"  During  the  whole  time  since  the  loan,  he  has  persevered 
in  a  system  of  cringing  prevarication  and  promises,  which  he 
must  have  known,  at  the  time  he  dealt  them  out,  he  never 
would  fulfil.  Various  artifices,  false  tales,  shifts,  and  pre- 
tences he  has  made  use  of;  and  I  have  been  the  dupe  of  them. 
I  cannot  believe  him  to  be  so  destitute  of  feeling  as  not  to  be 
mortified  and  degraded  in  his  own  estimation,  by  the  imag- 
ined necessity  of  resorting  to  them.  But,  in  the  one  case  or 
the  other,  I  am  unable  to  point  to  myself  a  more  humiliating 
situation  for  a  human  being  to  stand  in. 

"  I  have  derived  from  this  transaction  two  pieces  of  instruc- 
tion, which  are,  in  my  view,  an  adequate  compensation  for 
the  whole  sum,  had  such  an  event  happened  :  — 

"  1 .  To  be  cautious  of  hastily  and  unadvisedly  lending 
money  to  a  man  of  whose  ability  and  punctuality  I  am 
not  well  assured,  unless  it  be  accompanied  by  adequate 
security. 

"2.  To  adhere  religiously  to  a  determination  which  I  formed 
at  the  moment  of  commencing  business,  never  to  incur  a  debt 
which  I  have  the  remotest  apprehension  of  being  unable,  or 
even  finding  it  inconvenient,  to  discharge  ;  and  in  order  con- 
stantly to  possess  the  means  of  keeping  this  resolution,  what- 
ever my  income  may  be,  always  to  live  within  it." 


POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

IT  is  a  great  mistake  that  a  morning  walk,  or  other  form  of 
exercise  before  breakfast,  is  healthful.  The  malaria  which 
rests  on  the  earth  about  sunrise  in  summer,  when  taken  into 
the  lungs  and  stomach,  which  are  equally  debilitated  with  other 
portions  of  the  body  from  the  long  fast  since  supper,  is  very 
readily  absorbed,  and  enters  the  circulation  within  an  hour  or 
two,  poisoning  the  blood,  and  laying  the  foundation  for  trou- 


160  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

blesome  diseases ;  while  in  winter,  the  same  debilitated  con- 
dition of  these  vital  organs  readily  allows  the  blood  to  be 
chilled,  and  thus  renders  the  system  susceptible  of  taking 
cold,  with  all  its  varied  and  too  often  disastrous  results. 

I  do  not  wish  to  dismiss  the  statement  which  I  have  made 
with  a  simple  assertion.  The  denial  of  what  is  almost  univer- 
sally considered  a  truth  so  palpable,  as  scarcely  to  admit  of 
proof,  may  well  challenge  investigation.  Besides,  I  do  not 
want  my  readers  to  have  their  memories  crowded  with  ab- 
stract precepts  and  pithy  saws  about  health.  I  desire  them, 
on  the  contrary,  to  become  masters  of  general  principles  — 
to  know  and  to  understand  the  reason  of  things  :  then,  these 
things  can  be  remembered  without  an  effort ;  while  the  prin- 
ciple being  known,  a  very  varied  application  is  easily  made 
and  practically  observed,  — a  striking  example  of  which  has 
been  previously  given  in  reference  to  the  prompt  cure  of 
poisons,  and  bites  and  stings  of  insects  and  reptiles,  by  the 
employment  of  familiar  articles  of  kitchen  use. 

What  I  shall  say  on  the  subject  of  morning  exercise  is  in- 
tended to  apply  mainly  to  all  sedentary  persons  —  those 
whose  employment  is  chiefly  in-doors.  And  here  I  will  sim- 
ply appeal  to  the  actual  experience  of  any  sec^Bntary  reader, 
if  he  has  not  before  now  noticed,  when  he  has  been  induced, 
from  some  extraordinary  reason,  to  take  active  exercise 
before  breakfast,  on  some  bright  summer  morning,  that  he 
felt  rather  a  less  relish  for  his  food  than  usual  —  in  fact,  had 
no  appetite  at  all :  there  was  a  certain  sickishness  of  feeling, 
with  a  sensation  of  debility  by  no  means  agreeable.  It  will 
be  said  hero,  this  was  because  it  was  unusual,  that,  if  fol- 
lowed up,  these  feelings  would  gradually  disappear.  If  that 
is  so,  it  is  but  a  negative  proof,  for  the  system  naturally  has 
an  inherent  resisting  power,  called  into  action  by  hurtful 
appliances.  A  teaspoonful  of  brandy  will  produce  slight 
symptoms  of  lightness  of  head  in  some  persons,  if  taken 
before  breakfast ;  but,  if  continued,  the  same  amount  will, 
after  a  while,  produce  no  appreciable  discomfort.  The  cases 
are  precisely  parallel  :  that  a  man  gets  used  to  drinking 
brhndy  is  no  proof  that  it  does  not  injure  him. 

Another  person  will  remind  me  that  the  early  air  of  a  sum- 
mer's morning  seems  so  balmy  and  refreshing,  so  cool  and 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  161 

delightful,  that  it  cannot  be  otherwise  than  healthful.     That 

O 

is  begging  the  question  ;  it  is  a  statement  known  by  scientific 
observers  to  be  not  simply  untrue,  but  to  be  absolutely  false. 
It  is  a  common  observation  in  New  Orleans,  where  I  lived  a 
number  of  years,  by  those  who  remain  in  the  city  during  the 
raging  of  yellow  fever,  that  when  the  air  of  mornings  and 
evenings  appears  to  be  unusually  delicious,  —  so  clear,  and 
cool,  and  refreshing,  —  it  is  a  forerunner  of  an  increase  of  the 
epidemic.  Like  the  deceitful  Syren,  it  destroys  while  it 
lures. 

The  fruitful  cause  of  fevers  and  other  epidemics  in  south- 
ern climes  is,  the  decomposition  of  vegetable  matter :  the 
ranker  and  more  dense  the  vegetation,  the  more  deadly  are 
the  diseases  of  that  locality.  This  decomposition  cannot  take 
place  without  moisture,  and  heat  approaching  ninety  degrees 
of  Fahrenheit.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  sad  fact,  that 
thousands  upon  thousands  who  have  endured  the  hardships  of 
mining  in  California,  have  taken  the  "  Isthmus  fever  "  on  their 
return,  and  lingered  and  died.  From  the  first  discovery  of 
gold  in  the  Sacramento  valley,  the  newspaper  press  was 
united  in  its  cautions  against  the  almost  certain  death  attend- 
ant on  sleeping  at  Chagres  a  single  night ;  and  even  now,  it  is 
considered  one  of  the  most  important  effects  of  the  railroad 
finished  across  the  isthmus,  that  passengers  do  not  land  at  all 
at  Aspinwall,  but  get  into  the  cars  at  once,  and  cross  to  Pan- 
ama, where  a  steamer  is  always  in  waiting  to  receive  passen- 
gers for  San  Francisco,  thus  avoiding  a  night  on  the  isthmus. 
Before  the  removal  of  the  landing  from  Chagres  to  Aspinwall, 
it  became  common  to  make  arrangements  to  remain  on  board 
the  steamers  until  the  passengers  were  ready  to  start  immedi- 
ately for  Panama.  All  these  precautions  forced  themselves 
on  public  attention.  Now,  why  was  all  this?  Simply  to 
avoid  breathing  the  concentrated  malaria  arising  from  such 
immeasurable  quantities  of  decaying  vegetation,  shooting  out 
of  swamps  and  stagnant  marshes,  and  so  dense  as  to  make 
penetration  by  man  or  beast  impracticable. 

The  night  was  more  dreaded  than  the  day,  for  the  following 
reason  :  the  great  heat  of  the  sun  caused  a  rapid  evaporation 
of  the  malaria,  rarifying  it  to  such  a  degree  that  it  almost 
instantaneously  ascended  to  the  upper  atmosphere  after  the 


162  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

first  morning  hours ;  but  in  the  course  of  the  day,  when  the 
sun  declines  in  power,  these  vapors  gradually  condense,  get 
heavier,  and  fall  to  the  earth,  thus  giving  the  layer  of  air 
within  fifteen  feet  of  the  surface  a  density  and  concentration 
of  malaria  malignantly  fatal  ;  while  in  the  morning  this  densitv 

O  v 

is  not  diminished  until  the  sun  has  gained  some  power. 

The  older  citizens  of  Charleston  will  tell  you,  that  in  early 
years  it  was  certain  death  for  a  stranger  to  sleep  in  the  city 
one  night,  that  during  the  most  violent  ragings  of  epidemics, 
citizens  themselves  would  not  go  to  town  to  attend  to  neces- 
sary business,  except  at  noon-day,  —  the  hottest  portion  of  the 
twenty-four  hours,  —  because,  then  the  malaria  was  most  rari- 
fied  and  found  by  observation  to  be  the  least  hurtful.  Few 
knew  the  reason  ;  but  the  fact  was  so  palpable,  that  its  propri- 
ety enforced  practical  attention. 

In  the  old  books  which  treat  of  the  terrible  plagues  which 
depopulated  the  large  cities  in  the  middle  and  earlier  ages, 
the  people  who  could  not  leave  town  retreated  to  the  upper 
stories  of  their  dwellings,  and  would  not  come  down  to  pur- 
chase necessary  marketing  from  the  country  people,  but 
would  let  down  baskets  by  ropes,  and  draw  up  their  provi- 
sions, and  thus  escaped  with  impunity,  to  a  considerable  ex- 
tent. These  were  the  practical  results  which  followed  the 
observation  of  actual  facts,  by  a  comparatively  rude  and  un- 
thinking age ;  and  we  unfortunates  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
who  cannot  leave  the  city  in  summer,  but  must  have  our  noses 
always  at  the  grindstone,  whose  mills  stop  when  absent  for  a 
single  day ;  we  doctors  who  never  have  a  leisure  day  or  night 
or  hour,  who  always  have  a  greater  or  less  number  who  are 
looking  up  to  us  for  life  —  looking  to  the  hour  of  our  antici- 
pated visit  as  the  happiest  of  the  whole  twenty-four ;  and  we 
poor  editors,  who  could  not  go  if  we  would,  otherwise  our 
children  would  go  supperless  to  bed,  —  I  say,  we  all  may  gather 
a  practical  lesson  of  great  value  from  the  customs  of  those  of 
a  far  ruder  age,  a  lesson,  which  if  learned  well,  and  acted  on, 
would  save  to  us  many  a  darling  child,  many  a  life's  only  hope, 
many  a  poor  heart's  only  comfort. 

Never  allow  your  children  to  leave  the  second  or  third 
story  in  the  morning  until  they  have  had  a  plain,  hearty  break- 
fast ;  and  send  them  up  stairs  within  half  an  hour  after  sun- 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  103 

down,  or  give  them  their  supper  at  sundown :  these  obser- 
vances ought  to  be  adhered  to  from  May  until  October  in  the 
North,  and  from  April  to  November  in  the  South.  A  rigid 
attention  to  this  would  prevent,  at  once,  half  the  diarrhoatis 
and  summer  complaints  and  croups  which  desolate  our 
hearths  and  hearts  so  often  in  summer  time  in  the  city. 

It  is  a  striking  argument  for  the  perversity  of  human  na- 
ture, and  one  which  often  forces  itself  upon  the  attention  of 
observant  men,  that  we  bolt  a  concentrated  untruth  without 
wincing,  while  what  is  true,  with  all  its  simplicity  and  beauty 
and  usefulness,  is  disputed,  inch  by  inch,  with  a  suspicious- 
ness  and  a  pertinacity  most  remarkable. 

So  it  will  be,  I  have  no  doubt,  with  the  sentiment  I  have 
advanced  :  instead  of  being  received,  and  acted  upon,  many  a 
mind  will  be  busied  in  finding  an  argument  against  it,  instead 
of  considering  the  force  of  the  proof  offered  for  it,  just  as  we 
all  have  many  times  observed,  when  ordinary  minds  are 
engaged  in  an  argument,  it  will  occur,  in  perhaps  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  that  the  listener's  whole  attention  is  occupied  in 
casting  about  for  an  objection  or  new  proof,  instead  of  weigh- 
ing the  argument  of  the  speaker ;  consequently,  at  the  end  of 
the  dispute,  neither  party  is  a  whit  the  wiser,  but  rather  more 
confirmed  in  his  previous  opinion,  from  the  fact  that  no  argu- 
ment or  proof  to  the  contrary  was  allowed  a  hearing.  I  will 
just  step  aside  a  moment  here  to  make  a  useful  suggestion  ;  for 
being  "free  born,"  and  in  a  remarkably  "free  country," — so 
said,  at  least,  —  so  free,  indeed,  that  if  you  differ  from  anybody 
else  upon  any  subject,  or  fail  to  walk  in  the  exact  track  of 
your  predecessors,  or  do  or  say  anything  different  from  Mr. 
Everybody,  you  are  considered  a  ninny,  or  a  mule,  — being, 
as  I  just  said,  a  citizen  of  this  remarkably  free  and  tolerant 
country,  why  should  I  be  bound  to  stick  to  the  literal  text  for 
six  or  eight  pages  ?  Persons  meandering  along  the  cow  paths 
in  the  woods,  like  to  step  aside  occasionally  and  pick  an  invit- 
ing flower,  which  otherwise  would  have  wasted  its  sweetness 
on  snakes,  lizards,  and  spiders ;  so  I  step  aside  from  the  con- 
sideration of  disease  and  malaria,  and  cull  a  flower  for  my 
readers,  relative  to  argumentation.  It  is  such  an  important 
truth,  so  easily  practised,  would  save  so  many  hard  words 
and  harder  thoughts,  so  many  wounded  feelings,  so  much 


164  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

"  love's  labor  lost,"  and,  by  the  way,  accomplish  so  much  good, 
that  really  I  think  it  is  worth  the  price  of  this  volume,  —  If 
you  want  to  convince  anybody  of  anything,  argue  alone. 

Having  delivered  ourselves  of  this  great  and  useful  apo- 
thegm, we  will  resume  the  thread  of  the  argument,  taking  it 
for  granted,  that  the  reader  has  not  forgotten  the  subject-mat- 
ter of  discussion,  it  being  so  imaginatively  delightful  —  a 
summer  morning's  walk.  It  sounds  charmingly,  it  brings 
with  its  mere  mention  recollections  so  mournfully  pleasing, 
or  associations  so  delightful,  that  we  long  for  the  realization  — 
at  least,  until  "  sun  up  "  to-morrow  ;  then  what  a  change  !  We 
would  not  give  one  half-awake  good  stretch,  one  five  minutes' 
second  nap,  for  all  the  summer  morning  walks  of  a  whole 
year.  Who  does  not  feel  that  the  vis  inertia  of  the  first  wak- 
ing moments  of  a  May  morning  is  worth  more  than  a  dozen 
rambles  before  breakfast?  I  am  for  the  largest  liberty  of  en- 
joyment ;  1  am  not  among  the  multitude  of  the  weak  minded 
folk,  the  negative  sort  of  minds,  to  discard  what  is  good  to 
eat,  or  drink,  or  enjoy,  for  no  other  reason,  that  I  can  per- 
ceive, than  that  it  is  good,  and  a  cross  is  meritorious.  One 
man  says  tea  is  injurious  ;  another  Solomon  avers  that  coffee 
makes  people  bilious  ;  a  third,  and  he  a  Broadway  author  too, 
has  written  a  whole  book  to  prove  that  if  we  eat  wheat  bread, 
it  will  make  our  bones  brittle,  and  that  if  we  live  to  get  old 
at  all,  the  first  time  we  fall,  we'll  break  all  to  pieces  like  a 
clay  pipe-stem.  Verily  this  is  a  free  country  !  for  if  every- 
body is  to  be  believed,  we  are  free  to  eat  nothing  at  all.  So 
I  do  not  advise  a  denial  of  that  most  deliciously  enjoyable 
entity,  a  summer  morning's  nap,  because  it  is,  for  the  reasons 
I  have  named,  more  healthful  than  the  so  lauded  "  exercise 
before  breakfast."  If  you  must  remain  in  bed  until  breakfast, 
or  be  out  in  the  open  air  an  hour  or  two  before  breakfast  on 
an  empty  stomach,  then  I  say,  as  far  as  health  is  concerned, 
the  nap  is  better  than  the  exercise,  for  the  incontrovertible 
reasons  I  have  already  given. 

It  requires  no  argument  to  prove  the  impurity  of  a  city 
atmosphere  about  sunrise  and  sunset,  reeking,  as  it  must  be, 
with  the  odors  of  thousands  of  kitchens  and  cesspools,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  innumerable  piles  of  garbage  which  the  im- 
provident poor  allow  to  accumulate  in  front  of  their  dwellings, 


POPULAR  FALLACIES,  165 

in  their  back  yards  and  their  cellars.  Any  citizen  may  satisfy 
himself  as  to  the  existence  of  noisome  fumes  by  a  summer 
evening's  walk  along  any  of  our  by-streets  ;  and  although  the 
air  is  cooler  in  the  morning,  yet  the  more  hurtful  of  these 
malaria  saturate  it ;  but  of  such  a  subtle  nature  are  they,  that 
no  microscopic  observation,  no  chemical  analysis  has,  as  yet, 
been  able  to  detect,  in  an  atmosphere  thus  impregnated,  any 
substance  or  subsistence  to  which  these  deadly  influences 
might  be  traced,  so  subtle  is  the  poison,  so  impalpable  its 
nature ;  but  invisible,  untraceable  as  it  may  be,  its  influence 
is  certain  and  immediate,  its  effects  deadly. 

Some  will  say,  Look  how  healthy  the  farmer's  boy  is,  and 
the  daily  laborers  who  go  to  their  work  from  one  year's  end 
to  another  by  "  crack  of  dawn  !  "  My  reply  is,  if  they  are 
healthy,  they  are  so  in  spite  of  these  exposures  ;  their  simple 
fare,  their  regular  lives,  and  their  out-door  industry  give 
their  bodies  a  tone,  a  vigor,  a  capability  of  resisting  disease, 
which  nullifies  the  action  of  malaria  to  a  very  considerable 
extent.  Besides,  women  live  as  long  as  men,  and  it  cannot 
be  said  that  they  generally  exercise  out  of  doors  before  break- 
fast. 

Our  Knickerbocker  ancestry !  the  very  mention  of  them 
suggests  fat !  —  a  double  fatness  in  fact  —  fat  as  to  body,  and 
fat  as  to  purse.  If  you  catch  hold  of  one  of  them,  instead  of 
getting  a  little  pinch  of  thin  skin,  as  you  would  from  a  lean 
Yankee,  you  clutch  whole  rolls  of  fat,  solid  fat  What  sub- 
stantial people  the  real,  identical,  original  old  Knicks  are  ! 
how  long  they  live,  too  !  Expectant  sons-in-law  echo,  sigh- 
ingly, "  How  long  !  "  In  fact,  I  do  not  recollect  of  their  dying 
at  all,  at  least  as  we  do  ;  they  simply  ooze  out,  or  sleep  away. 
May  we  not  inquire  if  there  is  not  at  least  some  connection 
between  their  health  as  a  class,  and  the  very  general  habit  of 
the  sons  here,  derived  from  their  sires  in  fatherland,  of  eating 
breakfast  byt  candle-light  ?  Another  very  significant  fact  in 
point  is.  that  the  French  in  the  south  are  longer  lived,  and 
suffer  far  less  from  the  fevers  of  the  country,  than  their 
American  neighbors.  In  truth,  their  exemption  is  proverbial ; 
and  as  a  class  they  have  their  coffee  and  boiled  milk,  half  and 
half,  with  sugar,  brought  to  their  bedsides  every  morning,  or 
take  it  before  they  leave  the  house. 


NATURAL   DEATH. 

It  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  for  persons  who  go  West  to 
select  a  new  home  for  their  rising  families,  never  to  return. 
"  Took  sick  and  died ;  "  this  is  the  sad  and  comprehensive 
statement  of  the  widowed  and  the  fatherless,  owing  doubtless, 
in  many  instances,  to  their  travelling  on  horseback  early  in 
the  morning  and  late  in  the  evening,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
heat  of  the  day. 

Many  a  traveller  will  save  his  life  by  taking  a  warm  and 
hearty  breakfast  before  starting  in  the  morning,  and  by  put- 
ting up  for  the  night  not  later  than  sundown. 

It  is  of  considerable  practical  importance  to  answer  the 
question,  why  more  persons  have  died  in  "  the  States  "  from 
Isthmus  fever  than  in  California?  Simply  because,  on  their 
way  out,  their  bodies  are  comparatively  vigorous,  and  there 
is,  in  addition,  a  degree  of  mental  and  moral  excitement  which 
repels  disease ;  but  on  the  return,  it  is  strikingly  different ; 
the  body  is  wasted  by  hardship  and  privation,  while  the  spirit 
is  broken  by  disappointment,  or  the  mind  falls  into  a  species 
of  exhaustion,  when  successful,  from  the  long  and  anxious 
strife  for  gold.  Both  causes  operating,  —  one  to  weaken  the 
body,  the  other  to  take  away  all  mental  elasticity,  —  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  whole  man  becomes  an  easy  prey  to  disease. 


NATURAL    DEATH. 

NATURAL  DEATH  is  to  die  sweetly,  without  a  sob,  a  struggle, 
or  a  sigh.  It  is  the  result  of  a  long  life  of  uninterrupted 
health,  of  a  long  life  of  "  temperance  in  all  things"  And  such 
a  death  should  be  one  of  the  ends  and  aims  of  every  human 
being,  so  that  we  may  not  only  live  long,  but,  in  that  long 
life,  be  able  to  do  much  for  man,  and  much  for  God. 

The  love  of  life  is  a  universal  instinct.  Life  is  a  duty  ;  its 
peril  or  neglect,  a  crime.  We  are  placed  on  earth  for  a  pur- 
pose. .That  purpose  can  be  none  other  than  to  give  us  an 
opportunity  of  doing  good  to  ourselves  and  to  others  ;  and  to 
be  anxious  to  be  "off  duty"  sooner  than  God  wills,  is  no 
indication  of  true  piety.  The  good  man  has  one  ruling,  ever- 


NATURAL  DEATH.  107 

present  desire,  and  that  is,  to  live  as  long  on  the  earth  as  his 
Maker  pleases,  and,  while  living,  to  do  the  utmost  he  can  to 
benefit  and  bless  mankind.  And  to  accomplish  a  long  and 
active,  and  useful  life,  the  study  how  to  preserve  and  pro- 
mote a  high  degree  of  bodily  health  is  indispensable  ;  and  it 
seems  to  have  been  ordained  by  a  Providence,  both  kind  and 
wise,  as  a  reward  of  a  temperate  life,  that  such  a  life  should 
be  largely  extended,  and  that  its  decline  should  be  as  calm  as 
a  summer's  evening  —  as  gentle  as  the  babe  sleeps  itself  awajr 
on  its  mother's  bosom. 

Aunt  Phillis,  an  old  negro  woman  of  mine,  who  died  last 
fall,  was,  at  the  time  of  her  death,  at  the  lowest  estimate, 
one  hundred  and  eleven  years  old;  and  the  probability  is 
that  she  was  several  years  older. 

For  fifty  years  she  has  enjoyed  uninterrupted  health  ;  and, 
as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,  she  was  never  sick  in  her 
life,  except  at  the  birth  of  her  children.  For  thirty  years  of 
her  life,  and  down  to  within  three  years  of  her  death,  she  did 
not  seem  to  undergo  the  slightest  change  in  her  appearance, 
time  exercising  but  little  power  over  her.  The  first  sign  of 
decay  was  that  of  sight,  which  took  place  about  three  years 
before  her  death.  Up  to  that  time,  she  was  in  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  all  her  senses ;  and  at  one  hundred  and  four  years 
would  have  married  an  old  negro  man  of  seventy-five,  if  I 
had  not  objected. 

Her  sight  failed,  not  in  the  usual  way,  but  she  became  near- 
sighted, not  being  able  to  see  objects  at  a  distance.  Soon 
after  this  her  hearing  declined ;  but,  up  to  the  time  of  her 
death,  she  could  hear  better  than  old  persons  generally  do. 
The  first  indication  of  mental  failure  was  that  of  locality,  she 
not  being  able  to  find  her  way  to  a  neighbor's  house ;  yet  her 
memory  seemed  perfect  in  all  other  respects.  She  recollected 
her  friends  and  old  acquaintances,  but  could  not  find  her  way 
to  their  houses. 

I  at  first  supposed  this  was  owing  to  defective  sight ;  but, 
on  examination,  found  it  was  in  the  mind.  Still,  her  loco- 
motion was  good.  She  had  the  full  use  of  herself,  and  could 
walk  strong  and  quick  like  a  young  person ;  and  held  herself 
up  so  straight,  that,  when  walking  from  me,  I  often  took  her 
for  some  of  the  younger  servants  about  the  premises.  The 


168  NATURAL  DEATH. 

next,  and,  to  me,  the  most  singular  sign  of  decline,  was,  that 
she  lost  the  art  of  walking  —  not  that  she  had  not  strength 
enough  to  walk,  but  forgot  how  to  walk. 

The  children  would  lead  her  forth,  and  interest  her  for  a 
while,  and  she  would  get  the  idea,  which  seemed  to  delight 
her  very  much ;  and  she  would  walk  about  the  yard  and 
porches,  until  some  person  would  tell  her  she  had  walked 
enough.  But  she  would  no  sooner  take  her  seat,  and  sit  for 
a  few  moments,  before  all  idea  of  walking  would  be  gone, 
and  she  would  have  to  be  taught  over  again. 

At  length  she  became  unwilling  to  try  to  walk,  unless  she 
had  hold  of  something.  Take  her  by  the  arm,  and  she  would 
walk,  and  walk  well ;  but  just  as  soon  as  you  would  let  her 
go,  she  would  stop,  and,  if  no  further  aid  was  afforded  her, 
she  would  get  down,  and  crawl  like  a  child ;  and  at  length 
became  so  fearful,  that  she  refused  to  walk  altogether,  and 
continued  to  sit  up  during  the  day ;  but  had  to  be  put  to  bed, 
and  taken  up,  like  a  child.  After  a  while  she  became  un- 
willing to  get  up  altogether,  and  continued  to  lie  until  she 
died. 

All  this  time,  she  seemed  to  be  in  good  health,  took  her 
regular  meals,  and  her  stomach  and  bowels  were  uniformly  in 
good  condition.  I  often  examined  her,  the  best  I  could ;  and 
she  had  no  pains,  no  sickness,  no  aches  of  any  kind,  and, 
from  her  own  account,  and  from  all  that  I  was  able  to  learn, 
she  was  in  good  health,  and  all  the  while  in  fine  spirits.  The 
intellect  and  the  mind  seemed  to  be  perfectly  good,  only  that 
she  did  not  seem  to  know  where  she  was  all  the  time. 

At  length  one  of  the  children  said  to  me  that  Aunt  Phillis 
was  getting  cold ;  and,  on  examining  her,  I  found  it  even  so. 
The  extremities  were  cold  ;  still  she  took  her  regular  meals, 
and  did  not  complain  of  anything ;  and  the  only  change  that 
I  recollect  of,  was,  that  she  slept  a  little  more  than  usual. 
The  coldness  increased  for  two  days,  when  she  became  as 
cold  almost  as  a  dead  person.  Her  breathing  began  at  length 
to  shorten,  and  grew  shorter  and  shorter  till  she  ceased  to 
breathe. 

Death  closed  in  upon  her  like  going  into  a  soft,  sweet  sleep, 
and  for  two  minutes  it  was  difficult  to  tell  whether  she  was 
breathing  or  not.  There  was  no  contortion,  no  struggle,  no 


HEALTH  AND   HOUSE-HUNTING.  169 

twisting  of  the  muscles  ;  but  after  death  she  might  have  still 
been  taken,  on  a  slight  examination,  to  have  been  in  a  deep 
sleep.  So  passed  away  Phillis  :  the  only  natural  death  I  ever 
witnessed. 


HEALTH    AND    HOUSE-HUNTING. 

MANY  will  select  a  house  this  year  for  a  residence,  and  it 
will  be  their  last  home  on  earth.  It  would  not  have  been, 
had  they  remained  where  they  are,  or  moved  elsewhere.  It 
does  not  express  the  whole  truth  to  say  that  some  houses 
are  unhealthy ;  it  is  nearer  the  fact,  in  reference  to  many 
dwellings,  that  they  are  deadly.  Sometimes  certain  rooms 
in  a  house  are  so  impregnated  with  poisonous  emanations, 
that  their  occupants  become  ill  in  a  few  days.  I  knew 
formerly  of  a  capacious  mansion  (now  a  boarding-house)  in 
Walnut  Street,  Philadelphia,  which  has  in  it  a  certain  room, 
known  to  make  the  parties  sick  within  a  few  days  after  they 
move  into  it.  Within  a  year,  a  man  in  perfect  health  was 
placed  in  a  room  in  London,  and  in  a  few  days  died  of  putrid 
fever.  The  next,  and  the  next,  and  the  next  occupant  were 
noticed,  successively,  to  become  ill.  It  became  so  notorious, 
that  the  authorities  took  it  in  hand  to  examine  the  premises  ; 
and  it  was  found  that  the  man  who  papered  the  room,  in  order 
to  fill  up  a  cavity  in  the  wall,  put  in  a  bucketful  of  paste,  and 
pieces  of  the  glazed  papering,  which,  in  time,  began  to  fer- 
ment and  rot,  throwing  into  the  room  a  steady  supply  of  the 
noxious  fumes  of  decomposed  lead,  and  other  hurtful  ingre- 
dients employed  in  the  sizing  of  wall  paper.  It  is  known 
that  the  sizing  on  a  visiting-card  is  enough  to  poison  a  child, 
if  put  in  its  mouth ;  being  a  little  sweetish  to  the  taste,  it  is 
rather  palatable. 

Another  English  house  became  so  notoriously  unhealthy, 
that  the  common  people  reported  it  to  be  haunted :  it  soon 
gained  such  a  reputation  that  nobody  would  live  in  it  free 
of  rent.  Investigation  discovered  that  it  was  the  result  of 
pasting  new  paper  on  old. 

LESSON  I.  — In  repapering  a  room  or  house,  first  pull  off 
the  old  paper,  and  scrape  and  wash  the  walls. 


170  HEALTH  AND  HOUSE-HUNTINQ. 

Within  a  month,  the  grand  jury  of  the  chief  criminal 
court  of  New  York  city  have  repeated  their  bitter  com- 
plaints against  the  damp  and  noisome  apartment  in  which 
they  are  compelled  to  sit,  day  after  day,  in  the  performance 
of  their  official  duties.  The  recent  death  of  one  of  their 
number  is  attributed,  by  that  body,  to  the  unhealthfulness  of 
the  room  they  occupy. 

The  White  House,  at  Washington,  is  believed,  by  observant 
men  there,  to  be  the  main  reason  for  the  ill-health  of  our 
Presidents,  since  General  Harrison  first  went  there,  so  soon 
to  make  it  his  grave.  Its  unhealthiness  is,  very  justly,  at- 
tributed to  the  construction  of  a  bridge,  or  causeway,  across 
the  stream  which  passes  near  it,  thus  giving  a  larger  body  of 
still  water  than  in  former  times ;  and  the  neighborhood  of 
stagnant  water,  with  the  usual  amount  of  decaying  vegetation, 
must  originate  disease,  in  the  warmer  portions  of  the  year,  in 
all  temperate  latitudes. 

These  things  being  true  in  reference  to  houses,  there  are 
other  items  to  be  taken  into  consideration,  in  selecting  our 
dwellings,  besides  price,  appearance,  and  neighborhood. 

Very  many  persons  in  cities  are  decided,  in  determining 
upon  a  residence  for  themselves  and  families,  by  the  appear- 
ance of  the  street  front.  An  elegant  frontage  of  brown  stone, 
towering  in  stateliness  to  five  stories,  brings  many  a  dollar 
beyond  its  value,  to  pursy  landlords.  But  how  vigorously 
fond  new  husbands,  and  weak  old  ones,  have  to  shin  around, 
in  the  slops  and  snows  of  winter,  to  pay  the  rent !  And 
"monstrous"  hard  as  it  may  be  in  winter,  summer  heats 
make  it  "  monstrouser,"  as  "  Charcoal  Sketches  "  would  say. 
How  many  a  restless  turn  at  night,  how  many  a  Sunday  plan, 
—  which  matter-of-fact  Monday  morning  makes  vanish  in  thin 
air,  — how  many  an  anxious  conjecture,  it  costs,  whether  this 
acquaintance,  or  that  old  friend  or  nearest  neighbor,  might 
not  make  a  loan  "on  call,"  to  help  out  at  quarter-day  !  How 
many  racks  of  self-respect,  of  personal  independence,  of 
wounded  pride,  of  debasing  tergiversation,  it  costs  to  pay 
for  this  purchase  of  appearances,  the  initiated  can  better  tell 
than  I  can  guess,  never  having  been  a  renter  "  in  the  whole 
course  of  my  life,"  except  for  a  short  year,  on  trial,  in  the 
country  —  yes,  in  the  country.  Delightful  summer  resi- 


HEALTH  AND  HOUSE-HUNTING.  171 

dence  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  just  over  against  the 
Palisades!  —  as  dear  a  purchase  of  imaginary  blisses,  as  of 
the  appearances  aforesaid.  I  like  no  half-ways.  Give  me  the 
centre  of  the  largest  city  on  the  continent,  or  a  log-cabin  in 
the  far  recesses  of  the  unpenetrated  West  1 

But  the  waste  of  money  to  keep  up  appearances  is  not  the 
greatest  loss.  Health  sacrificed,  life  perilled,  is  oftentimes 
an  "extra"  not  calculated  on  ;  but,  like  "extras,"  comes  with 
a  thunder-clap  of  unexpectedness ;  meeting,  too,  the  fate  of 
all  "extras"  —  an  exclamation,  a  demur,  dwindling  down  to 
an  argument,  and  final  delivery  of  the  purse  strings. 

LESSON  II.  —  Reader,  pay  extras,  and  be  done  ivith  it.  I 
have  always  found  it  the  quickest  and  the  easiest  plan.  It 
saves  temper ;  for  the  more  you  argue  about  it,  the  more 
angry  you  will  get,  and  the  worse  you  will  feel  afterwards, 
when  you  find  you  have  not  only  lost  your  temper,  but  your 
money,  too. 

Other  persons,  as  intimated  already,  will  put  jewelry,  plate, 
gold  watch,  all,  "up  the  spout,"  to  make  up  the  usual  advance 
on  the  first  quarter  to  the  landlord,  who  has  not  the  pleasure 
of  their  acquaintance  —  will  do  all  this,  to  secure  a  residence 
in  a  "genteel  street?  or  "fashionable  neighborhood"  on  "the" 
side  of  Broadway.  There  are  men  and  women  —  that  is. 
grown  persons  of  both  sexes  —  in  New  York,  who  would 
think  themselves  hopelessly  disgraced  to  live  in  a  street  which 
had  "East"  attached  to  it;  would  consider  they  had  lost  caste 
more  irrecoverably  by  living  on  the  "  other "  side  of  Broad- 
way, than  if  they  had,  in  a  pinch,  checked  on  a  bank  for  ten 
thousand,  when  they  had  never  deposited  a  dollar  there.  To 
such  persons,  and  to  all  others  living  in  cities,  I  wish  to  make 
some  suggestions  in  reference  to  the  selection  of  a  family 
residence. 

If  practicable,  let  the  rear  of  the  house  face  the  south ; 
mainly  for  two  reasons.  First  and  chief,  unsightly  things, 
the  washings  of  the  kitchen  and  the  laundry,  are  deposited 
there,  and,  writh  other  causes,  keep  the  back-yards  almost 
always  in  a  damp  condition,  which,  with  the  dust  and  un- 
avoidable accretions  of  various  kinds,  make  fit  materials  for 
decompositions,  and  their  inevitable  result,  the  generation  of 
hurtful  gases,  sometimes  actually  poisonous.  The  heat  of  the 


172  HEALTH  AND  HOUSE-HUNTING. 

sun  has  a  drying  influence,  and,  with  moderate  attention,  the 
premises  may  be  kept  sweet  and  clean.  The  second  reason 
is,  greater  light  is  afforded  to  the  kitchen,  where  it  is  so  much 
needed,  especially  in  winter  time,  to  allow  of  the  cleanly 
preparation  of  daily  food.  A  mind  of  any  refinement  revolts 
at  the  mere  mention  of  cookery  in  the  dark. 

The  front  of  a  house  in  the  city  does  not  so  much  need 
the  sun,  since  the  too  frequent  custom  is  to  make  a  parlor 
of  the  first-floor  front,  for  the  occasional  accommodation  or 
reception  of  guests  and  visitors,  in  many  instances  averaging 
not  an  hour  a  day ;  and,  for  similar  reasons,  the  "  spare 
rooms  "  are  those  in  front  in  the  upper  stories.  In  my  opin- 
ion, the  very  best,  largest,  and  most  commodious  rooms  in  a 
house  should  be  appropriated  to  the  daily  and  hourly  use  of 
the  family. 

As  accumulations  are  not  allowed  in  the  streets,  the  sun  is 
not  so  much  needed  on  a  northern  front ;  while  the  passing  of 
persons  and  vehicles  -compensate,  in  cheeriness,  for  the  ab- 
sence of  sunshine.  But  it  is  not  a  total  absence,  for  there 
is  the  sunshine  of  the  countenance  of  your  visitors  —  unless 
of  that  not  innumerable  class  who  are  rather  disagreeably 
disappointed,  when  they  find  you  are  at  home,  and  had  much 
rather  have  left  a  card  :  their  smiles  are  of  the  sardonic  order, 
or  of  the  mechanical  kind,  icicling,  in  a  moment,  all  the  out- 
gushings  of  kindliness  —  were  it  not  the  fashion  to  keep  our 
parlors  so  dim  and  dusky  that  we  can't  tell  whether  the  smile 
comes  from  the  head  or  the  heart. 

In  selecting  a  residence,  notice  if  there  is  any  standing 
water  in  the  cellar,  any  uncovered  drain  or  well.  I  know 
of  two  adjoining  houses  in  Philadelphia,  which  have  brought 
death  to  every  family  that  has  occupied  them  for  some  years 
past ;  and  another,  not  far  distant,  which  has  proved  the  death 
of  three  successive  occupants,  each  of  them  strong,  hearty 
men  when  they  moved  in. 

Notice  the  rear  premises.  If  they  adjoin  a  stone-cutter,  or 
livery  stable,  or  distillery,  or  cow-yard,  or  for  drays,  car- 
riages, and  the  like ;  if  any  of  these  are  within  a  block  of 
you,  in  any  direction,  the  house  is  dear  at  any  price  :  it  is 
dear  at  nothing,  whatever  may  be  its  frontage. 

As  a  general  rule,  avoid  long  rows  of  brown-stone  fronts, 


EYES  AND  COLD   WATER.  173 

built  uniformly ;  or  of  brick,  or  any  other  material.  They 
were  built  by  contract,  or  for  purposes  of  speculation.  If 
the  flues  do  not  burn  you  up,  there  ia  large  probability  that 
the  rats  will  devour  everything  .you  purchase,  over  and  above 
what  you  actually  consume,  and  the  friends  whom  Biddy, 
your  cook,  supplies  with  their  daily  provender.  Some  time 
since  I  accompanied  a  gentleman,  who  wanted  to  purchase  or 
lease  a  family  mansion,  on  a  tour  of  observation.  We  looked 
through  one  of  a  row  of  five-story  brown  fronts  —  one  of  the 
most  imposing  in  appearance  outside  in  New  York.  It  had 
been  occupied  but  a  year ;  the  flue  had  set  it  on  fire  ;  the 
family  had  left ;  and,  there  being  no  carpeting  or  other  furni- 
ture to  cover  defects,  there  was  revealed  to  us  a  quality  of 
carpentership  utterly  disgraceful  to  both  builders  and  owners. 
The  flooring  had  not  the  roughness  planed  off  in  many  places  ; 
while  the  spaces  between  the  "tongue  and  grooves,"  as  also 
between  the  ends  of  the  planks,  and  between  the  wash  or 
surboard  and  the  floor,  were,  in  many  instances,  from  a 
quarter  to  half  an  inch  or  more  in  width ;  and  this  in  rooms 
where  the  fire  and  water  had  no  access.  These  items,  to- 
gether with  spoiled  locks,  broken  keys,  doors  hanging  awry 
from  a  shrinking  of  the  wood  and  settling  of  the  building, 
immovable  window-sashes,  made  a  tenement,  which,  notwith- 
standing its  fine  brown-stone  frontage,  was  unfit  to  be  occu- 
pied by  any  family  who  wanted  to  live  comfortably. 


EYES  AND   COLD  WATER. 

THE  aquatic  furor  has  become  so  general,  that,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  cold  water  is  a  pure,  natural  product,  it  is 
claimed  to  be  a  universal  and  beneficial  application.  Arsenic 
is  a  pure,  natural,  and  simple  product ;  so  is  prussic  acid,  as 
obtained  from  a  peach  kernel.  A  single  drop  of  tobacco  oil 
will  kill  a  cat  or  dog  in  five  minutes. 

Many  persons  are  daily  ruining  their  eyes  by  opening  them 
in  cold  water  of  mornings.  Cold  water  will  harden  and 
roughen  the  hands,  and  much  more  will  it  do  so  to  the  mani- 
fold more  delicate  covering  of  the  eye;  or  the  eye  will,  in 


1"4  TO  CURE  A  COLD. 

self-defence,  become  scaly,  in  the  manner  of  a  fish ;  that  is, 
the  coats  of  the  eye  will  thicken,  constituting  a  species  of  cat- 
aract, which  must  impair  the  sight.  That  water,  cold  and 
harsh  as  it  is,  should  be  applied  to  the  eye  for  curative  pur- 
poses, in  place  of  that  soft,  warm,  lubricating  fluid  which 
nature  manufactures  for  just  such  purposes,  indicates  great 
thoughtlessness  or  great  mental  obliquity.  Nothing  stronger 
than  lukewarm  water  should  ever  be  applied  to  the  eye, 
except  by  special  medical  advice,  and  under  special  medical 
supervision ;  for  we  have  only  one  pair  to  lose.  Even  warm 
water  should  be  applied  only  by  closing  the  eye  and  flapping 
it  against  the  lid  with  the  hand,  patiently,  scarcely  letting  the 
fingers  touch  the  lid.  This  cools  the  eye  more  rapidly  than 
cold  water  does,  and  without  the  shock,  while  its  soothing 
effect  is  delightful,  dissolving  or  washing  out  the  yellow  or 
other  matter  which  may  have  accumulated  over  night,  in 
half  the  time  required  by  cold  water. 


TO  CUKE  A  COLD. 

A  BAD  cold,  like  measles  or  mumps,  or  other  similar 
ailments,  will  run  its  course  of  about  ten  days,  in  spite  of 
what  may  be  done  for  it,  unless  remedial  means  are  employed 
•within  forty-eight  hours  of  its  inception.  Many  a  useful  life 
may  be  spared  to  be  increasingly  useful  by  cutting  a  cold 
short  off  in  the  following  safe  and  simple  manner :  On  the 
first  day  of  taking  a  cold,  there  is  a  very  unpleasant  sensation 
of  chilliness.  The  moment  you  observe  this,  go  to  your  room 
and  stay  there.  Keep  it  at  such  a  temperature  as  will  entirely 
prevent  this  chilly  feeling,  even  if  it  requires  a  hundred  de- 
grees of  Fahrenheit.  In  addition,  put  your  feet  in  water, 
half  leg  deep,  as  hot  as  you  can  bear  it,  adding  hotter  water 
from  time  to  time  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  so  that  the  water 
shall  be  hotter  when  you  take  your  feet  out  than  when  you 
put  them  in ;  then  dry  them  thoroughly,  and  put  on  warm, 
thick,  woollen  stockings,  even  if  it  be  summer,  — for  summer 
colds  are  the  most  dangerous,  —  and  for  twenty-four  hours  eat 
not  an  atom  of  food,  but  drink  as  largely  as  you  desire  of 


DIETING  FOR  HEALTH.  175 

any  kind  of  warm  teas;  and  at  the  end  of  that  time,  if  not 
sooner,  the  cold  will  be  effectually  broken,  without  any  medi- 
cine whatever. 

Efficient  as  the  above  means  are,  not  one  in  a  thousand  will 
attend  to  them,  led  on,  as  men  are,  by  the  hope  that  a  cold 
will  pass  off  of  itself.  Nevertheless,  this  article  will  now  and 
then  pass  under  the  eye  of  a  wise  man,  who  does  not  choose 
to  run  the  double  risk  of  taking  physic  and  dying  too. 


DIETING  FOR  HEALTH. 

A  MAN  may  diet  as  well  as  physic  himself  to  death. 
Some  time  since  a  young  man  called  to  see  me,  thin,  pale, 
despondent,  and  with  a  great  variety  of  symptoms.  On 
inquiry,  I  found  he  had  been  reading  about  diet,  vegetable 
food,  and  other  similar  subjects,  and  concluding  that,  as  many 
persons  owed  their  ill  health  to  over-eating,  he  would  eat 
very  little  of  anything,  discarded  meat  of  all  kinds,  and  con- 
sidered tea  and  coffee  as  decidedly  poisonous  in  their  ultimate 
effects.  By  this  means,  provisions  being  high,  he  concluded 
he  would  save  money,  and  health,  too.  He  had  for  some  time 
been  living  on  bread  and  potatoes,  a  small  daily  allowance, 
with  as  much  cold  water  as  he  could  possibly  swallow ;  the 
object  of  that  being  to  keep  himself  washed  out  clean.  No 
wonder  that  such  a  man  was  an  invalid,  —  mind  and  body  full 
of  symptoms.  "Dieting"  is  not  starvation;  it  is  living  on 
substantial  nourishing  food,  in  amount  sufficient  to  satisfy  the 
wants  of  the  system.  A  man  is  in  little  danger  of  eating  too 
much  if  he  will  confine  himself  to  two  or  three  plain  articles 
of  diet  at  any  one  meal.  This  is  a  secret  which  every  man 
and  woman  in  the  land  ought  to  know.  Living  exclusively 
on  cold  food  will  soon  engender  disease,  especially  in  cold 
weather.  And  as  certainly  will  a  scant  diet  do  the  same  if 
persevered  in.  -  A  striking  illustration  of  this  is  found  in  the 
history  of  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  modern  times. 

Napoleon  the  First,  while  a  subaltern,  was  in  such  extreme 


176  BAD   TEMPER  AND  INSANITY. 

poverty  in  Paris,  that  he  was  sometimes  not  able  to  raise  ten 
cents,  with  which  to  purchase  a  scanty  dinner,  and  conse- 
quently had  to  go  without  any.  He  had  even  to  borrow 
worn  clothes  from  acquaintances,  and  to  go  out  alternately 
with  his  brother  in  the  same  coat.  His  food  was  so  scanty 
that  his  face  became  pinched,  harsh,  and  angular.  At  length 
the  skin  became  so  diseased  that  it  almost  filled  one  with  dis- 
gust to  look  at  it ;  and  it  required  all  the  skill  of  that  eminent 
and  able  practitioner,  Corvisart,  for  several  years,  to  eradi- 
cate it. 

Lesson  1.  Disease  will  as  certainly  be  engendered  by  too 
little  food  as  by  too  much. 

2.  Dieting  consists  in  adapting  the  food  in  quantity,  as 
well  as  quality,  to  the  wants  of  the  system. 


BAD  TEMPER  AND  INSANITY. 

PASSIONATE  people,  —  the  hasty  kind,  — who  flare  up  in  a 
blaze,  like  fire  to  tow,  or  a  coal  to  powder,  without  taking 
time  to  inquire  whether  there  is  any  ground  for  such  a  pyro- 
technic display,  and  then  get  more  furious  when  they  find 
out  there  was  no  cause  for  their  fiery  feats,  may  learn  a  use- 
ful as  well  as  a  serious  lesson  from  an  item  in  Dr.  Blan- 
chard's  report  of  the  King's  County  Lunatic  Asylum,  that 
"  three  men  and  three  women  became  insane  by  uncontrollable 
temper." 

We  all  feel  a  sympathy  for  one  who  has  become  demented 
from  loss  of  kindred,  from  disappointment,  and  from  a  hard 
lot  in  life  ;  but  we  can  have  no  such  feeling  for  quarrelsome, 
ill-natured,  fretful,  fault-finding,  complaining,  grumbling 
creatures,  the  greater  part  of  whose  every-day  life  tends  to 
make  those  whose  calamity  it  is  to  be  bound  to  them  as 
miserable  as  themselves.  I  consider  ill  nature- a  crime  ;  and, 
like  other  crimes,  it  is  ordained,  in  the  government  of  God,  to 
meet,  sooner  or  later,  its  merited  reward.  Other  vile  pas- 


HARDENING   THE   CONSTITUTION.  177 

sions  may  have  some  points  of  extenuation  —  the  pleasure,  for 
example,  which  may  attend  their  indulgence  ;  but  ill  nature  — 
that  is,  a  fretful,  fault-finding  spirit  —  in  its  origin,  action  and 
end  has  no  extenuating  quality ;  and  in  the  application  of  the 
Scripture  principle,  "  With  what  measure  ye  mete  it  shall  be 
measured  to  you  again,"  will  find  a  pitiable  end.  Therefore, 
with  all  the  power  God  hath  given  you,  strive,  reader,  and 
strive  for  life,  to  mortify  this  deed  of  the  flesh.  Watch  hourly, 
watch  every  moment,  against  the  indulgence  of  a  hasty  tem- 
per, as  being  offensive  to  your  Maker  and  contemptible  in  the 
eyes  of  your  fellow-man ;  contemptible,  because  for  the  per- 
son who  possesses  it,  and  knows  it,  yet  indulges  in  it,  and 
makes  no  effective  efforts  to  restrain  it,  no  human  being  can 
have  any  abiding  attachment  or  respect,  founded,  as  it  is,  in 
low  morals,  or  low  intellect,  or  both. 


HARDENING  THE  CONSTITUTION. 

MEN  talk  about  "hardening  the  constitution,"  and,  with 
that  view,  expose  themselves  to  summer's  sun  and  winter's 
wind,  to  strains  and  over-efforts,  and  many  unnecessary  hard- 
ships. To  the  same  end,  ill-informed  mothers  souse  their 
little  infants  in  cold  water  day  by  day  ;  their  skin,  and  flesh, 
and  bodies,  as  steadily  growing  rougher,  and  thinner,  and 
weaker,  until  slow  fever,  or  water  on  the  brain,  or  consump- 
tion of  the  bowels,  carries  them  to  the  grave ;  and  then  they 
administer  to  themselves  the  semi-comfort  and  rather  ques- 
tionable consolation  of  its  being  a  mysterious  dispensation  of 
Providence,  when,  in  fact,  Providence  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  He  wrorks  no  miracle  to  counteract  our  follies. 

The  best  way  1  know  of  hardening  the  constitution  is  to 
take  good  care  of  it ;  for  it  is  no  more  improved  by  harsh 
treatment  than  a  fine  garment  or  new  hat  is  made  better  by 
being  banged  about. 


178  HOW  TO  PREACH  EFFECTIVELY. 


LONG  PRAYERS. 

THESE  are  impolitic ;  they  engender  an  irritable  fyame  of 
mind,  and  make  the  body  restless.  Short,  earnest,  fervent 
prayers  wake  up  the  attention  and  soften  and  soothe  the  un- 
quiet spirit.  Flow  it  is  with  others  I  do  not  pretend  to  say ;  but 
this  I  know  for  myself,  that  when  I  am  compelled  to  listen  to 
a  very  long  prayer,  instead  of  joining  in  with  the  petitioner, 
I  am  all  the  time  praying  that  he  would  quit.  I  know  it  is 
very  wrong  to  do  so ;  but  it  steals  over  me  before  I  am  aware 
of  it,  and  leads-  me  into  another  wrong-doing — that  of  feeling 
more  thankful  that  the  prayer  is  over,  than  for  blessings  from 
above.  Long  prayers  are  for  the  closet,  for  the  secret 
chamber,  where  none  can  witness  but  the  All-Seeing  Eye. 


HOW  TO  PREACH  EFFECTIVELY. 

To  preach  effectively,  and  with  the  least  wear  and  tear  of 
mental  and  physical  strength,  — 

1.  Have  a  thorough  knowledge  of  your  subject. 

2.  Be  deeply  impressed  with  its  importance. 

3.  Open  the  discourse  with  an  earnest  enunciation,  in  con- 
cise language,  of  some  striking  truth.     This  will  inevitably 
wake  up  attention. 

4.  Then  plunge  in  medias  res,  with  the  fervor  of  a  man 
who  is  speaking  for  the  last  time  as  to  himself,  or  as  to  some 
one  or  more  of  his  hearers,  and  upon  whose  skirts  hangs  the 
blood  of  immortal  souls. 

5.  As  soon  as  the  burden  of  the  discourse  is  delivered,  sit 
down,  even  if  you  have  been  speaking  but  twenty  minutes  ~ 
but  fifteen,  but  ten.     The  value  of  a  discourse  is  not  in  its 
length,  but  in  the  nailing  home  of  some  great  truth  on  the 
understanding  and  the  conscience ;  and  be  assured  that  such 
a  truth   is  there  for  life.     Thus  yon  will  preach  easily  for 
yourself,  profitably  to  those  who  hear  you. 


HOW   TO  LEAVE   CHURCH.  179 


HOW  TO  LEAVE  CHUECH. 

Shut  your  mouth  and  move  on :  that  tells  the  whole  story. 
To  spread  out  all  the  advantages,  as  the  subject  merits,  would 
require  several  pages.  City  human  nature  is  to  be  always  in 
a  hurry  —  it  is  a  necessity.  We  must  be  in  a  hurry,  or  out 
of  bread.  Five  minutes  is  half  a  dollar  or  half  a  thousand  to 
some  business  man  in  New  York,  in  character  or  money,  in 
almost  any  day  in  the  year.  Banks  are  closed  at  the  moment. 
All  the  great  lines  of  rail  cars  and  steamboats  leave  at  the 
moment,  and  that  moment  lost  is  twelve  or  twenty-four  hours 
gone  forever.  Many  a  reader  will  acknowledge  a  decided 
feeling  of  irritation  or  impatience,  if  not  actual  mental  anath- 
ema, at  the  inconsiderate  practice  of  many  church-goers  of 
stopping  to  shake  hands  in  the  aisles  at  the  close  of  religious 
services.  This  leads  to  exchange  of  compliments,  and 
inquiries  and  answers,  standing  still  the  while,  and  thus  hin- 
dering all  the  crowd  behind  them.  Others  reserve  their  loi- 
tering until  they  reach  the  doorsteps,  and  then  take  a  deliber- 
ate view  of  the  throng  before  them,  apparently  satisfied  with 
having  reached  the  fresh  air  themselves.  There  is  scarcely 
ever  a  religious  assembly  at  which  there  is  not  one  or  more 
persons  whom  some  urgent  business  —  some  sick  child  or 
suffering  parent  —  does  not  call  away  in  all  haste  compatible 
with  the  decencies  of  the  occasion  ;  and  no  one  has  a  right  to 
deprive  me  of  the  earliest  return  to  loved  ones  at  home.  Not 
only  is  that  minute  lost  to  me,  —  and  how  long  is  even  a  min- 
ute to  the  suffering  expectant  one  there  !  —  but  an  equal  time 
is  lost  to  the  fifty  or  five  hundred  who  may  be  behind  me. 
To  those  who  aim  to  "  do  justly  and  love  mercy  "  I  commend 
reflection  on  this  point. 

Besides,  when  I  have  heard  a  good  discourse,  —  when  I 
have  been  really  fed  in  the  sanctuary,  —  I  don't  want  to  be 
irritated  out  of  it  by  a  thoughtless  loiterer,  who  thus  makes 
me  run  the  risk  of  losing  an  engagement  or  missing  an  ap- 
pointment. Then  again,  when  one  has  been  warmed  up  reli- 
giously by  a  heart-searching  gospel  sermon,  and  his  whole  soul 
is  subdued  by  the  soothing  influence  of  Bible  preaching,  it 
falls  harshly  indeed  upon  the  ear  to  have  remarks  made, 


180  HOW  TO  LEAVE  CUURCH. 

whether  of  idle  compliment,  or  cold  formality,  or  profane 
mirth.  Not  long  since,  in  a  Fifth  Avenue  church,  I  was 
obliged  to  listen  to  a  lady  in  the  aisle,  remarking  to  a  gentle- 
man on  the  comparative  merits  of  a  dinner  of  soup  or  one 
of  mush  and  milk.  She  averred  they  were  both  excellent  — 
for  poor  people ;  for  I  soon  learned  she  was  connected  with  a 
benevolent  soup  society,  or  a  soup  benevolent  society.  That 
did  alter  the  case  some ;  for  it  is  an  old-time  maxim  of  mine,, 
that  the  case  being  altered,  alters  the  case.  Still,  altered  as  it 
was,  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  had  got  such  an  ascendency, 
that  every  idea  of  the  sermon,  if  it  had  any,  took  to  itself 
wings  and  flew  away ;  and  what  is  more,  they  never  came  back 
again ;  and  for  hours  after,  there  were  floating  about  in  my 
brain,  images  of  poverty  and  Fifth  Avenue,  gospel  soup, 
mush  preaching,  philanthropic  barege,  muslin  de  laines,  cash- 
mere shawls.  The  preaching  of  that  day  was  lost  to  me.  I 
had  understood,  before,  that  the  gospel  was  "  bread  " — that 
it  was  the  "  pure  milk  of  the  word ;  "  and  on  one  occasion,  in 
the  little  English  chapel  in  Paris,  not  far  from  the  Champ 
d'Elysees,  that  it  was  the  real  Eau  de  Vie,  and  ought  to  be 
drank  freely ;  but  that  it  should  be  mixed  up  in  my  mind 
with  such  things  as  "soup,"  "stir-about,"  "mush" — yes,  vul- 
gar "  mush  " —  is  too  bad. 

But  near  that  lady  there  may  have  been  another,  upon 
whose  heart  the  sermon  had  fallen  with  penetrating  power, 
whom  it  had  almost  persuaded  to  be  a  Christian ;  and  as  he 
was  slowly  passing  out,  he  might  have  been  just  on  the  point 
of  deciding  to  be  a  Christian  now.  Would  not  the  sound 
have  fallen  upon  his  ears  as  Milton's  doors  turning  upon  their 
rusty  hinges,  "  grating  harsh  thunder  "  ?  —  the  sound  of  mush  ! 

Not  very  many  years  ago,  a  young  man  had  been  deeply 
impressed  with  the  importance  of  religion,  and  concluded  that 
after  the  service  he  would  call  upon  the  minister  for  conversa- 
tion and  instruction  ;  but  a  person  near  him  was  overheard  to 
say,  "  What  a  tedious  sermon  that  was  ! "  He  immediately 
reflected  that  surely  his  feelings  were  overwrought,  and  that 
he  had  attached  more  importance  to  the  discourse  than  it 
merited.  The  result  was,  he  did  not  call  upon  the  minister, 
and  died  several  years  afterwards,  never  having  had  a  return 
of  those  <c'rious  feelings. 


HOW   TO  LEAVE   CHURCH.  181 

But  this  subject  has  a  bearing  on  health  of  greater  impor- 
tance than  many  might  imagine.  If  churches  are  chilly,  the 
sooner  you  get  out  after  service  and  walk  briskly,  so  as  to 
wake  up  the  circulation,  the  greater  will  be  your  chances  of 
not  taking  cold. 

Usually,  in  cold  weather,  churches  become  warm  —  almost 
oppressively  so  —  towards  the  close  of  the  services ;  the 
thermometer  approaching  seventy  degrees,  causing  in  many 
actual  perspiration.  If  you  go  immediately  into  the  street, 
and  the  sun  gives  no  sign  of  thaw,  there  is  a  change,  in  a  mo- 
ment's time,  of  some  forty  degrees.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, walking  slow  and  conversing,  the  raw  Avind  pene- 
trates the  clothing  and  chills  the  skin,  while  a  cold  dash  of 
air  is  thrown  in  upon  the  tender  lungs,  at  each  word  or  two, 
or  sentence,  through  the  open  mouth ;  thus  in  a  moment's 
time  checking  external  perspiration  and  chilling  the  whole 
lungs.  But  suppose  you  walk  fast ;  that  creates  a  vigorous 
throwing  of  the  warm  blood  to  the  skin,  to  the  surface,  and 
counteracts  the  effects  of  a  cold  wind  to  a  very  considerable 
extent ;  while,  if  the  mouth  be  closed,  the  cold  air  is  not  at 
once  thrown  in  upon  the  lungs,  enervated  by  breathing  hot 
air  for  two  hours  ;  but  it  passes  up  the  nostrils,  and  making  a 
circuit  through  the  head,  down  to  the  throat,  is  thus  thor- 
oughly warmed  before  it  gets  to  the  lungs,  and  causes  no 
shock  at  all.  It  is  the  neglect  of  this  simple  precaution 
which  originates  colds,  and  not  unfrequently  fatal  ones. 
Many  persons  are  kept  from  going  to  church  because  they 
"  are  sure  to  take  cold  there ;  "  though  I  have  not  known  a 
person  to  avoid  the  theatre,  the  concert,  or  the  opera,  on  that 
account. 

I  do  not  advise  by  any  means  that  persons  should  bolt  out 
of  church  as  if  the  house  were  on  fire  ;  for  common  decorum 
requires  a  pause  after  the  benediction  has  been  fully  pro- 
nounced :  but  when  you  have  once  left  your  pew,  move  on 
with  decent  pace ;  make  no  pauses ;  engage  in  no  conversa- 
tion with  any  one  until  you  have  reached  the  sidewalk ;  and 
if,  when  you  get  there,  your  sense  of  propriety  allows  you  to 
stand  still,  obstructing  and  staring  at  passers-by,  be  it  so.  It 
is  not  quite  as  objectionable  as  barricading  a  church  aisle. 

Taking  every  view  of  the  case,  a  short  practice  will  con- 


182  A  LIFE-SAVING   THOUGHT. 

vince  any  observer  of  the  advantages,  physical,  polite-i-cal, 
and  religious,  of  following  the  advice  at  the  head  of  this  arti- 
cle — "In  leaving  church,  shut  your  mouth,  and  move  on." 


A  LIFE-SAVING  THOUGHT. 

AN  amount  of  sickness,  suffering,  and  death  will  be  saved 
to  multitudes,  during  any  spring  and  summer,  if  the  sugges- 
tions which  I  am  about  to  make  are  attended  to. 

Children  eat  for  three  objects  :  — 

1.  To  keep  them  warm. 

2.  To  supply  the  wastes  of  the  system. 

3.  To  afford  materials  for  growth. 

Hence  children  who  are  in  'health  are  always  hungry,  are 
always  eating  :  we  can  well  remember  the  happy  time  when 
we  could  eat  apples  all  day,  and  melons,  and  grapes,  and  gin- 
gerbread, and  candies,  besides  the  regular  meals  of  morning, 
noon,  and  night.  But  in  mature  life  the  experience  of  each 
will  tell  him,  how  changed  !  The  reason  is,  one  object  of  eat- 
ing has  ceased  to  exist  —  we  grow  no  longer  ;  and  Nature, 
with  her  watchful  instinct,  steps  in  and  moderates  the  appe- 
tite ;  for  if  we  ate  as  when  we  were  children,  very  few  would 
survive  a  third  of  a  century. 

The  objects,  then,  for  which  men  eat,  are  two  only :  first,  to 
keep  them  warm  ;  second,  to  supply  the  waste  of  the  system  ; 
and  whatever  is  eaten  beyond  what  is  necessary  for  these 
two  things,  engenders  disease  in  everybody,  everywhere,  and 
under  all  circumstances,  and  never  fails,  no  more  than  fails 
the  rising  of  the  daily  sun ;  for  Nature's  laws  are  constant  as 
the  flow  of  time. 

No  man  works  as  hard  in  summer  as  in  winter ;  consequent- 
ly the  wastes  of  the  system  are  less ;  therefore  a  less  amount 
of  food  is  wanted  in  summer  than  in  winter.  The  supply 
must  be  regulated  by  the  demand. 

Again,  we  eat  to  keep  us  warm.  Some  articles  of  food 
have  ten  times  more  fuel  than  nutriment.  It  must  therefore 
be  apparent  that  we  do  not  require  as  much  food  in  summer 


MONEY  A  MEDICINE.  183 

as  in  winter  for  this  reason  also,  that  there  is  not  the  same 
demand  for  heat ;  and  kind  Nature,  ever  watchful,  steps  in 
again  and  takes  away  our  appetite  as  soon  as  the  warm 
weather  begins.  All  of  us  are  sensible  of  a  diminution  of  ap- 
petite even  in  early  spring ;  but  forgetting  the  natural  reasons 
for  it,  we  begin  to  think  we  are  not  well,  and  either  by  tempt- 
ing the  appetite,  or  taking  tonics,  or  "forcing"  food,  crowd 
the  system  with  more  aliment  than  the  body  requires.  For  a 
while,  the  bodily  powers,  with  the  excess  of  winter  vigor, 
are  able  to  work  up  this  extra  supply,  and  convert  it  into 
blood ;  but  there  is  no  use  for  it  all ;  it  is  not  called  for ;  and 
it  accumulates  in  the  body,  stagnates,  or,  in  medical  phrase, 
causes  "  congestions."  Congestion  in  the  brain  causes  us  to 
feel  dull  and  heavy,  and  stupid  and  sleepy  :  congestion  in  the 
stomach  causes  loss  of  appetite  :  congestion  in  the  liver  gives 
rise  to  nausea,  sick  headache,  diarrhoeas,  dysenteries,  and  the 
whole  catalogue  of  fevers. 

The  brute  creation,  obeying  their  instinct,  are  not  troubled 
with  summer  complaints,  and  the  thousand  ills  which  affect 
and  destroy  men.  But  we  overpower  our  instincts,  and  mak- 
ing ourselves  the  slaves  of  appetite,  contrary  to  reason,  per- 
ish in  multitudes.  Investigations  have  shown  that  we  require 
in  midsummer  near  one  half  less  food  than  in  midwinter. 


MONEY   A   MEDICINE. 

PROSPERITY  is  the  best  pill }  it  wakes  up  the  failing  pulses 
of  life,  and  renovates  the  whole  machinery  of  man.  Take  two 
poor  men  who  are  equally  ill,  to  whom  exercise  is  alike  appli- 
cable :  condemn  one  to  the  unendurable  drudgery  of  walking 
a  mile  thrice,  daily,  to  a  certain  post,  and  when  he  gets  there 
to  turn  round  and  walk  back  again ;  and  let  another  spend  an 
equal  time  in  collecting  bills,  or  obtaining  subscriptions  at  a 
percentage  which  clears  him  ten  dollars  a  day,  if  he  is  dili- 
gent ;  it  is  easy  to  conjecture  which  of  the  two  will  convalesce 
the  more  rapidly.  One  thing  I  am  certain  of:  making  money 
helps  me  amazingly ;  it  is  the  elixir  of  mind  and  body  both. 
This  idea  of  the  hygienic  value  of  money  on  men  is  strikingly 


184  BE  SYSTEMATIC. 

illustrated  in  the  report  of  M.  Vellerme,  Secretary  of  the 
Poor  Law  Commissioners  in  Havre,  where  the  average  age  of 
the  rich  is  twelve  years  greater  than  that  of  the  poor. 

1088  prosperous  persons  died  at  an  average  age  of  42  years. 
4791  middling  class  "  "  29      " 

19849  poor  "  "  20      " 

Therefore,  as  it  is  easier  to  take  money  than  to  take  pills,  I 
advise  my  readers,  one  and  all,  as  a  means  of  long  life,  to  get 
rich  by  prudent  industry  and  honorable  economy. 


BE  SYSTEMATIC. 

THIS  will  add  more  to  your  convenience  and  comfort  through 
life  than  you  can  now  imagine.  It  saves  time,  saves  temper, 
saves  patience,  and  saves  money.  For  a  while  it  may  be  a 
little  troublesome ;  but  you  will  soon  find  that  it  is  easier 
to  do  right  than  wrong ;  that  it  is  easier  to  act  by  rule  than 
without  one. 

Be  systematic  in  everything :  let  it  extend  to  the  most 
minute  trifles  ;  it  is  not  beneath  you.  Whitefield  could  not  go 
to  sleep  at  night,  if,  after  retiring,  he  remembered  that  his 
gloves  and  riding-whip  were  not  in  their  usual  places,  where 
he  could  lay  his  hand  on  them,  in  the  dark,  on  any  emer- 
gency ;  and  such  are  the  men  who  leave  their  mark  for  good 
on  the  world's  history.  It  was  by  his  systematic  habits  from 
youth  to  age,  that  Noah  Webster  was  enabled  to  leave  to  the 
world  his  great  Dictionary.  "  Method  was  the  presiding  prin- 
ciple of  his  life,"  writes  his  biographer. 

Systematic  men  are  the  only  reliable  men :  they  are  the 
men  who  comply  with  their  engagements.  They  are  minute 
men.  The  man  who  has  nothing  to  do  is  the  man  who  does 
nothing.  The  man  of  system  is  soon  known  to  do  all  that 
he  engages  to  do,  to  do  it  well,  and  do  it  at  the  time  prom- 
ised ;  consequently  he  has  his  hands  full.  When  I  want  any 
mechanical  job  done,  I  go  to  the  man  whom  I  always  find 
busy ;  and  I  do  not  fail  to  find  him  the  man  to  do  that  job 
promptly,  and  to  the  hour. 


HOW   TO  BE  HAPPY.  185 

And  more,  teach  your  children  to  be  systematic.  Begin 
with  your  daughters  at  five  years  of  age  ;  give  them  a  drawer 
or  two  for  their  clothing ;  make  it  a  point  to  go  to  that 
drawer  any  hour  of  the  day  and  night,  and  if  each  article  is 
not  properly  arranged,  give  quiet  and  rational  admonition ; 
if  arranged  well,  give  affectionate  praise  and  encouragement. 
Remember  that  children,  as  well  as  grown  people,  will  do 
more  to  retain  a  name  than  to  make  one. 

As  soon  as  practicable,  let  your  child  have  a  room  which 
shall  be  its  own,  and  treat  that  room  as  you  did  the  drawer ; 
thus  you  will  plant  and  cultivate  a  habit  of  systematic  action, 
which  will  bless  that  child  while  young,  increase  the  blessing 
when  the  child  becomes  a  parent,  and  extend  its  pleasurable 
influences  to  the  close  of  life.  A  single  unsystematic  person 
in  a  house  is  a  curse  to  any  family.  A  wife  who  has  her 
whole  establishment  so  arranged,  from  cellar  to  attic,  that  she 
knows,  on  any  emergency,  where  to  go  for  a  required  article, 
is  a  treasure  to  any  man  (my  experience,  reader  !),  while  one 
who  never  knows  where  anything  is,  and  when  it  is  by  acci- 
dent found  is  almost  sure  to  find  it  crumpled,  soiled,  out  of 
order,  such  a  wife  as  this  latter  is  unworthy  of  the  name,  and 
is  a  living  reproach  to  the  mother  who  bore  her. 


HOW  TO  BE  HAPPY. 

THAT  is  the  question.  Reader,  I  have  seen  a  great  deal,  and 
felt  more ;  have  talked,  and  travelled,  and  enjoyed,  and  suf- 
fered with  all  sorts  of  people  ;  have  wandered  much,  and  staid 
at  home  more  ;  have  been  on  the  sea,  and  in  it,  and  under  it ; 
have  been  laughed  at,  shot  at,  quarrelled  at,  praised,  blamed, 
abused ;  have  been  blown  at,  and  blown  up  ;  have  had  much, 
and  had  little,  —  so  much  as  to  enjoy  nothing,  so  little  that  I 
would  have  enjoyed  a  crust  of  bread ;  because  the  ship  went 
to  the  bottom  with  everything  in  it,  leaving  me  to  float  to  a 
sand-bank.  And  then,  again,  I  have  wandered  over  the  earth, 
and  under  it,  and  through  it, — its  caves,  and  its  dungeons 
and  darkness,  —  after  stalagmites,  and  stalactites,  and  speci- 
mens of  black  rocks  and  white  ones,  blue  stones  and  gray ; 


186  APPETITE. 

lived  for  months  on  desert  islands,  just  for  the  purpose  of 
picking  up  new  shells  on  the  beach,  which  the  tide  of  night 
never  failed  to  leave  behind  it.  In  those  bygone  days,  when  I 
had  the  three  great  requisites  of  an  enjoying  traveller,  to  wit, 
plenty  of  time,  plenty  of  patience,  and  plenty  of  money,  so, 
if  the  coach  turned  over  and  smashed  up,  I  could  afford  to 
wait  until  another  could  be  had,  or  if  the  ship  went  to  the 
bottom,  instead  of  to  its  destined  port,  it  was  just  the  same  to 
me  ;  because  if  I  was  not  at  one  place  I  was  at  another,  and 
there  was  always  some  strange  rock  to  look  at,  some  queer 
"  dip,"  that  set  me  calculating  how  many  horse  power  it 
required  to  make  that  rock  just  turn  up  so,  and  all  the  million 
inquiries  which  geology,  astronomy,  conchology,  and  a  dozen 
other  dry  ua\nes  suggested,  which  not  only  had  the  effect  to 
keep  me  from  fretting,  but  kept  me  in  an  interested  humor, 
—  well,  in  all  these  different  situations,  and  as  many  more,  I 
have  found  out,  among  others,  three  things  :  — 

1 .  That  a  man  out  of  money  cannot  be  happy. 

2.  That  a  man  out,  of  health  cannot  be  happy. 

3.  That  a  man  without  a  wife  cannot  be  happy. 
Therefore  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  best  way 

to  be  happy  is  to  take  care  of  your  health,  keep  out  of  debt, 
and  get  a  wife. 


APPETITE. 

"  ASKING  FOR,"  that  is  the  meaning.  Who  asks?  Nature: 
in  other'  words,  the  law  of  our  being,  —  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  wisely  .and  benevolently  implanted  in  every 
living  thing,  whether  animal,  worm,  or  weed. 

Yielding  to  this  appetite  is  the  preservation  of  all  life  and 
health,  below  man ;  he  alone  exceeds  it,  and  in  consequence 
sickens  and  dies  thereby,  long  before  his  prime,  in  countless 
instances. 

The  fact  is  not  recognized  as  generally  as  it  ought  to  be, 
that  a  proper  attention  to  the  "  askings  "  of  nature  not  only 
maintains  health,  but  is  one  of  the  safest,  surest,  and  most 
permanent  methods  of  curing  disease. 


APPETITE.  187 

It  is  eating  without  an  appetite  which  is,  in  many  instances, 
the  last  pound  which  breaks  the  camel's  back ;  nature  had 
taken  away  the  appetite,  had  closed  the  house  for  necessary 
repairs ;  but,  in  spite  of  her,  we  "forced  down  some  food" 
and  days,  and  weeks,  and  months  of  illness  followed,  if  not 
cholera,  cramp,  colic,  or  sudden  death. 

In  disease,  there  are  few  who  cannot  recall  instances  where 
a  person  was  supposed  to  be  in  a  dying  condition,  and  in  the 
delirium  of  fever,  or  otherwise,  had  arisen,  and  gone  to  the 
pail  or  pitcher,  and  drank  an  enormous  quantity  of  water, 
or  gone  to  the  pantry,  and  eaten  largely  of  some  unusual 
food,  and  forthwith  begun  to  recover.  We  frequently  speak 
of  persons  getting  well  having  the  strangest  kind  of  appetite, 
the  indulgence  of  which  reason  and  science  would  say  would 
be  fatal. 

We  found  out,  many  years  ago,  when  engaged  in  the  gen- 
eral practice  of  medicine,  that  when  the  patient  was  conva- 
lescing, the  best  general  rule  was,  Eat  not  an  atom  you  do 
not  relish ;  eat  anything,  in  moderation,  which  your  appe- 
tite craves,  from  a  pickle  down  to  sole-leather.  Nature  is 
like  a  perfect  housekeeper ;  she  knows  better  what  is  want- 
ing in  her  house  than  anybody  else  can  tell  her.  The  body 
in  disease  craves  that  kind  of  food  which  contains  the  element 
it  most  needs.  This  is  one  of  the  most  important  facts  in 
human  hygiene ;  and  yet  we  do  not  recollect  to  have  ever 
seen  it  embodied  in  so  many  words.  We  have  done  so  to 
render  it  practical ;  and  to  make  it  remembered,  we  state  a 
fact  of  recent  occurrence. 

Some  three  years  ago,  a  daughter  of  James  Damon,  of  Ches- 
terfield, fell  down  a  flight  of  stairs,  bringing  on  an  illness 
from  which  it  was  feared  she  would  not  recover.  She  did, 
however,  recover,  except  the  loss  of  hearing  and  sight.  Her 
appetite,  for  some  weeks,  called  for  nothing  but  raisins  and 
candy  ;  and  since  last  fall,  nothing  but  apples  were  eaten.  A 
few  weeks  ago  she  commenced  eating  maple  buds ;  since 
which  time  she  has  nearly  regained  her  former  health  and 
activity,  and  her  sight  and  hearing  are  restored. 

We  all,  perhaps,  have  observed  that  cats  and  other  ani- 
mals, when  apparently  ill,  go  out  and  crop  a  particular  grass 
or  weed.  In  applying  these  facts,  let  us  remember  to  indulge 


188  DECISION  OF  CHARACTER. 

this  "asking  for"  of  nature,  in  sickness  especially,  in  moder- 
ation ;  feeling  our  way  along  by  gradually  increasing  amounts, 
thus  keeping  on  the  safe  side.  We  made  this  one  of  our 
earliest  and  most  inflexible  rules  of  practice. 


DECISION  OF  CHARACTER. 

WITHOUT  this  no  man  or  woman  was  ever  worth  a  button, 
nor  ever  can  be.  Without  it  a  man  becomes  at  once  a  good- 
natured  nobody,  the  poverty-stricken  possessor  of  but  one 
solitary  principle  —  that  of  obliging  everybody  under  the  sun, 
merely  for  the  asking.  He  is  like  the  judge  who  uniformly 
decided  according  to  the  views  of  the  closing  speech.  Having 
no  mind  of  his  own,  such  a  man  is  a  mere  cipher  in  society, 
without  weight  of  character,  and  utterly  destitute  of  influ- 
ence. Such  a  one  can  never  command  the  respect,  or  even 
the  esteem,  of  men  around  him.  All  that  he  can  command  is 
a  kind  of  patronizing  pity.  The  man  to  be  admired,  respect- 
ed, feared,  and  who  will  carry  multitudes  with  him,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  is  he  who  plants  his  foot  upon  a  spot,  and  it 
remains  there,  in  spite  of  storm,  or  tempest,  or  tornado  :  the 
very  rage  of  an  infuriated  mob  but  gives  new  inspiration  to 
his  stability  of  purpose,  and  makes  him  see  that  he  is  so  much 
the  more  of  a  man. 

Then,  again,  what  a  labor-saving  machine  is  this  "decision 
of  character  "  —  this  thin-pressed  lip  —  in  all  the  departments 
of  life  !  The  infant  of  a  year  knows  its  meaning  well ;  children 
see  it  with  intuition.  Servants,  the  dullest  of  the  dull,  —  the 
veriest  flaxen  waddle,  a  week  only  from  "Fader  Land,"  — 
learn  it  at  a  glance.  Why,  this  decision  of  character,  this 
firmness  of  purpose,  pays  itself  in  any  walk  down  Broadway. 
The  little  match-girl  does  not  repeat,  "Matches,  please?"  the 
ragged  crossing-sweeper  does  not  take  the  pains  to  run  half 
across  the  street  after  you ;  he  knows  better.  Your  own 
child  does  not  repeat  its  request,  however  anxious  to  have  it 
granted  ;  and  wifcy  herself  soon  learns  "  it's  no  use  knocking 
at  the  door  any  more,"  if  the  first  tap  does  not  gain  admis- 
sion. 


BE  COURTEOUS.  189 

Then,  again,  what  a  happy  deliverance  it  is  from  that  state 
of  betweenity,  which  is  amongst  the  most  wearing  of  all  feel- 
ings !  Why,  half  the  people  don't  know  the  luxury  of  having 
made  up  one's  mind  irrevocably.  What  an  amazing  saving 
of  time  it  is,  of  words,  of  painful  listening  to  distressing 
appeals  !  Why,  it  is  a  positive  benefit  to  the  persons  refused  ; 
for  it  enables  them  to  decide  without  an  effort  that  further 
importunity  is  useless.  But,  my  brother,  see  to  it  that  your 
decisions  be  always  right  first ;  and  to  guarantee  that,  you 
must  have  a  sound  head  and  a  good  heart :  then  may  it  well 
be  like  a  Medo-Persian  law  —  unalterable.  But  "be  kindly 
firm." 


BE    COURTEOUS. 

DOES  a  lady  ever  ride  in  an  omnibus  or  a  city  rail-car? 
Women  do  often ;  and  now  and  then  a  lady  may,  when  im- 
pelled by  some  emergency  of  rain,  or  mud,  or  cash.  The 
manner  in  which  women  take  the  seats  vacated  by  gentlemen, 
who  have,  in  consequence,  to  stand  the  remainder  of  the  trip, 
is  anything  but  confirmatory  of  the  fact  that  our  fair  country- 
women, as  a  class,  know  what  common  courtesy  is,  practi- 
cally. In  a  daily  car-riding  of  five  or  six  years,  we  cannot 
remember  as  many  instances  of  a  lady-like  acceptance  of  a 
proffered  seat.  It  is  almost  universal,  that  a  gentleman's 
place  is  taken  without  the  slightest  acknowledgment,  by  word, 
or  look,  or  gesture,  that  a  benefit  has  been  conferred  and 
received.  And  yet  it  is  a  very  great  accommodation ;  for 
to  stand  in  the  passage-way,  while  the  cars  are  in  motion, 
for  a  dozen  squares  or  so,  the  centre  of  thirty  pairs  of  eyes, 
is  little  short  of  purgatorial ;  and  being  such  an  accommoda- 
tion, the  smallest  kind  of  a  remuneration  would  be  a  word, 
or  look,  or  gesture,  of  felt  indebtedness.  The  perseverance 
which  New  York  gentlemen  exhibit,  in  instantaneously  quit- 
ting their  seats  when  a  car  is  crowded  and  a  woman  enters, 
is  highly  creditable  to  their  manliness  and  chivalry. 

We  suggest,  as  a  remedy,  that  all  the  "boarding-schools," 
"  day-schools,"  and  "  institutes,"  which  have  the  prefix 
Female,  hold  a  convention  immediately,  if  not  sooner,  for 


190  BE  COURTEOUS. 

the  purpose  of  debating  the  question  whether  or  not  a 
Professor  of  "Politeness"  might  not  be  appointed,  to  uni- 
versal advantage,  whose  duty  it  should  be  to  "give  lessons 
in  politeness "  to  every  young  girl  in  the  school,  from  her 
entrance  until  her  exit  from  the  establishment.  We  have 
seen  tottering  gray-headed  men  resign  their  seats  to  young 
women,  and  not  a  smile,  or  courtesy,  or  "thank  you,"  ever 
escape  from  their  lips.  Shame  on  the  superficial,  inadequate, 
corrupting,  and  debasing  system  of  "  female  boarding-schools  " 
and  "institutes"  as  a  class,  whose  absorbing  object  is,  not  to 
prepare  the  girls  committed  to  their  care  to  become  helping 
wives,  intelligent  mothers,  discreet  matrons  of  a  household, 
and  ornaments  in  useful  and  benevolent  society,  but  to  make 
money,  and  return  therefor  a  painted  flower,  a  gilded  time- 
piece, with  no  enduring  quality  but  the  brass  of  which  it  is 
chiefly  composed.  How  sigh  we  for  the  wives,  the  mothers, 
the  daughters  of  a  bygone  age  I 

There  is  a  name,  now  passed  away,  we  love  to  think  upon 
—  a  synonym,  a  representative,  in  his  age,  of  all  that  was 
honorable  in  his  dealing,  courteous  in  his  deportment,  manly 
in  his  bearing,  and  Christian  in  his  heart  —  a  fine  Virginia 
gentleman  of  the  old  school  was  James  Harper.  He  once 
related  to  us  the  following  incident :  — 

"  Some  years  ago  an  old  woman  entered  a  public  convey- 
ance in  Broadway.  It  was  raining,  and  there  was  no  vacant 
seat;  I  instantly  offered  her  mine.  She  declined,  and  in  a 
manner  which  showed  that  she  felt  she  had  no  claim  for  the 
seat,  nor  to  such  an  evidence  of  consideration  from  a  stranger. 
I  insisted,  and,  as  if  fearing  to  wound  my  feelings  by  a  far- 
ther refusal,  she  took  it,  with  a  courteous  expression  of  her 
obligation.  When  she  wanted  to  leave  the  conveyance,  it 
stopped  in  a  muddy  part  of  the  street,  and,  feeling  assured 
that  I  \vas  with  a  lady,  I  did  not  hesitate  to  pass  out  before 
her,  and  hand  her  to  the  sidewalk.  I  then  returned  to  my 
seat  doubly  gratified  :  first,  in  having  it  in  my  power  to  oblige 
a  lady;  and,  second,  in  seeing  that  it  was  appreciated  —  not 
a  common  thing,  doctor,  nowadays,"  as  he  turned  away 
with  one  of  his  hearty,  full-souled  laughs. 

But  who  was  the  lady  ? 

I  learned  afterwards  that  it  was  Mrs.  Alexander  Hamilton. 


DYSPEPSIA.  191 


EATING    TOO    MUCH. 

WHAT  countless  thousands  it  puts  into  the  doctor's  pockets  ! 
—  furnishes  his  splendid  mansion  in  Union  Square  and  Fifth 
Avenue;  enables  him  to  "sport  his  carriage,"  to  own  a  villa 
on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  and  live  in  style  to  the  end  of 
the  chapter. 

"  /  can't  help  it,"  says  the  poor  unfortunate  milk-and-water 
individual,  who  never  had  decision  enough  to  do  a  deed 
worthy  of  remembrance  an  hour  later.  My  wishy-washy 
friend,  suppose  I  help  you  to  avoid  making  a  beast  of 
yourself. 

Have  two  articles  of  food  sent  to  your  room,  besides  bread 
and  butter,  with  half  a  glass  of  cold  water.  I  will  give  you 
permission  to  eat  as  much  as  you  want,  thus,  thrice  a  day. 
'Or,  if  you  prefer  eating  with  company,  you  may  safely  sit 
down  to  the  " best  table"  in  the  land,  if  you  have  manhood 
enough  to  partake  of  but  any  two  articles.  It  is  the  variety 
of  our  food  which  brutifies  us. 


DYSPEPSIA. 

THE  nervous  energy  is  the  motive  power  of  the  whole  man, 
spiritual,  mental,  and  physical.  When  that  power  is  equally 
distributed,  the  body  is  well,  the  brain  is  clear,  and  the  heart 
is  buoyant.  If  the  brain  has  more  than  its  share,  it  burns 
itself  up,  and  makes  the  "lean  Cassius"  —  the  restless  body 
and  the  anxious  countenance. 

As  there  is  a  given  quantity  of  nervous  influence  for  the 
whole  body,  if  the  brain  has  more  than  its  natural  portion, 
the  stomach  has  less  ;  consequently  the  food  is  not  thoroughly 
assimilated,  or,  as  we  call  it,  digested.  This  being  the  case, 
the  requisite  amount  of  nutriment  is  not  derived  from  the 
food,  and  the  whole  body  suffers  —  doubly  suffers;  for  not 
only  is  the  supply  of  nutriment  deficient,  but  the  quality  is 
imperfect.  These  things  go  on,  aggravating  each  other,  until 


192  DYSPEPSIA. 

there  is  not  a  sound  spot  in  the  whole  body  ;  the  whole  machi- 
nery of  the  man  is,  by  turns,  the  seat  of  some  ache,  or  pain, 
or  "  symptom."  This  is  a  common  form  of  aggravated  dys- 
pepsia. Such  being  the  facts,  some  useful  practical  lessons 
may  be  learned. 

1.  Never  sit  down  to  table  with  an  anxious  or  disturbed 
mind.     Better,  a  hundred-fold,  intermit  that  meal ;  for  there 
will  then  be  that  much  more  food  in  the  world  for  hungrier 
stomachs  than  yours ;  and,  besides,  eating  under  such  circum- 
stances can  only,  and  will  always,  prolong  and  aggravate  the 
condition  of  things. 

2.  Never  sit  down  to  a  meal  after  any  intense  mental  effort ; 
for  physical  and  mental  injury  is  inevitable  —  and  no  man  has 
a  right  deliberately  to  injure  body,  mind,  or  estate. 

3.  Never   go   to   a   full   table   during   bodily   exhaustion, 
designated  by  some  as  being  worn  out,  tired  to  death,  used 
up,  done  over,  and  the  like.     The  wisest  thing  you  can  do, 
under  such  circumstances,  is  to  take  a  cracker  and  a  cup  of 
warm  tea,  either  black  or  green,  and  no  more.     In  ten  min- 
utes you  will  feel    a   degree  of  refreshment  and    liveliness 
which  will  be  pleasantly  surprising  to  you ;  not  of  the  tran- 
sient kind,  which  a  glass  of  liquor  affords,  but  permanent; 
for  the  tea  gives  present  stimulus,  and  a  little  strength  ;  and 
before  it  subsides,  nutriment  begins  to  be  drawn  from  the 
sugar,  and  cream,  and  bread ;  thus  allowing  the  body,  grad- 
ually and  by  safe  degrees,  to  regain  its  usual  vigor.     Then, 
in  a  couple  of  hours,  you  may  take  a  full  meal,  provided  it 
does  not  bring  it  later  than  two  hours  before  sundown ;  if 
later,  then  take  nothing  for  that  day,  in  addition  to  the  cracker 
and  tea,  and  the  next  day  you  will  feel  a  freshness  and  vigor 
not  recently  known.     No  reader  will  require  to  be  advised  a 
second  time,  who  will  make  a  trial  as  above ;  while  it  is  a  fact 
of  no  unusual  observation,  among  intelligent  physicians,  that 
eating  heartily,  under  bodily  exhaustion,  is  not  an  infrequent 
cause  of  alarming  and  painful  illness,  and  sometimes  of  sudden 
death.     These  things  being  so,  let  every  family  make  it  a 
point  to  assemble  around  the  family  board  with  kindly  feel- 
ings, with  a  cheerful  humor,  and  a  courteous  spirit ;  and  let 
that  member  of  it  be  sent  from  the  table  in  disgrace  who 
presumes  to  mar  the  ought-to-be   blest  reunion,   by  sullen 


HEREDITARY  DISEASE.  193 

silence,  or  impatient  look,  or  angry  tone,  or  complaining 
tongue.  Eat  in  thankful  gladness,  or  away  with  you  to  the 
kitchen,  you  graceless  churl,  you  ungrateful,  pestilent  lout 
that  you  are.  There  was  grand  and  good  philosophy  in  the 
old-time  custom  of  having  a  buffoon  or  music  at  the  dinner- 
table. 


HEREDITARY  DISEASE. 

THERE  is,  strictly  speaking,  no  such  thing  as  hereditary 
disease.  Children  are  not  born  diseased,  however  (some 
specific  maladies  excepted)  much  one  or  both  parents  are, 
but  they  are  simply  born  with  a  predisposition  to  such  paren- 
tal malady.  They  are  born  with  the  material,  with  the 
powder ;  but  actual  disease  will  no  more  occur,  unless  ex- 
citing causes  are  applied,  than  powder  would  detonate  with- 
out the  aid  of  fire.  The  observant  reader  has  often  felt 
surprised  at  seeing  robust,  hearty  children,  of  parents  who 
were  seemingly  at  not  a  great  remove  from  the  grave :  and 
if  rational  care  were  taken  of  such  children,  they  would  live 
to  become  healthy  men  and  women.  The  practical  lesson 
should  be,  a  hopeful  diligence  in  the  rearing  of  children  of 
diseased  parentage.  The  difference  between  the  children 
of  healthy  and  diseased  parents  amounts  to  this  :  As  to  the 
latter,  the  powder  is  drier,  they  have  less  capability  of  re- 
sisting the  causes  of  disease  :  the  consequence  is,  a  greater 
necessity  for  carefulness.  This  necessity  is  often  felt,  and 
practically  attended  to  :  the  result  is,  that  such  persons  are 
found  living  scores  of  years  after  they  have  mouldered  in 
the  grave,  who,  in  priding  themselves  on  having  constitutions 
which  nothing  could  hurt,  could  not  be  made  to  feel  the  need 
of  carefulness,  and  consequently  perished  long  before  their 
prime. 

We  have  an  instructive  and  royal  illustration  in  point,  in 
the  persons  of  Queen  Victoria  and  her  children.  Intermar- 
riage with  blood  relations,  for  ages,  has  deeply  impregnated 
the  Guelph  family  with  scrofula.  The  earlier  years  of  the 
British  queen  were  spent  in  feebleness  and  disease  ;  and  yet 
she  is  now  the  npparently  healthy  mother  of  a  large  family 


194  WINTER  SHOES. 

of  robust,  healthy  children ;  which  is  at  once  creditable  to 
herself,  and  to  the  medical  skill  which  dictates  the  hygiene 
of  her  household.  The  daily  routine  of  these  children  is : 
To  rise  early,  breakfast  at  eight,  and  dine  at  two ;  first  hour 
after  breakfast,  the  classics  ;  next,  the  modern  —  grammatical 
instruction  being  also  carefully  given ;  next,  military  exer- 
cises for  the  boys ;  then  music  and  dancing,  then  the  riding- 
school  :  music  and  drawing  for  the  girls  ;  then  the  carpenter's 
shop,  and  occasionally  the  laboratory;  then  shooting  and 
working  in  the  royal  gardens ;  then  supper,  then  prayers, 
and  then  to  bed. 

Result:  high  bodily  health,  in  spite  of  ages  of  hereditary 
tendencies. 


WINTER  SHOES. 

LIKE  the  gnarled  oak  that  has  withstood  the  storms  and 
thunderbolts  of  centuries,  man  himself  begins  to  die  at  the 
extremities.  Keep  the  feet  dry  and  warm,  and  we  may  snap 
our  fingers  in  joyous  triumph  at  disease  and  the  doctors. 

Put  on  two  pairs  of  thick  woollen  stockings,  but  keep  this  to 
yourself;  go  to  some  honest  son  of  Saint  Crispin  and  have 
your  measure  taken  for  a  stout  pair  of  winter  boots  or  shoes  ; 
shoes  are  better  for  ordinary,  every-day  use,  as  they  allow  the 
read}r  escape  of  toe-odors,  while  they  strengthen  the  ankles 
by  accustoming  them  to  depend  on  themselves.  A  very 
slight  accident  is  sufficient  to  cause  a  sprained  ankle  to  an 
habitual  boot-wearer.  Besides,  a  shoe  compresses  less,  and 
hence  admits  of  a  more  vigorous  circulation  of  the  blood. 
But  wear  boots  when  you  ride  or  travel.  Give  direction, 
also,  to  have  no  cork  or  India  rubber  about  the  shoes,  but  to 
place  between  the  layers  of  the  soles,  from  out  to  out,  a  piece 
of  stout  hemp  or  tow  linen  which  has  been  dipped  in  melted 
pitch.  This  is  absolutely  impervious  to  water — does  not 
absorb  a  particle ;  while  we  know  that  cork  does,  and  after 
a  while  becomes  "  soggy  "  and  damp  for  weeks.  When  you 
put  them  on  for  the  first  time,  with  your  ordinary  socks,  they 
feel  as  "  easy  as  an  old  shoe,"  and  you  may  stand  on  damp 
places  for  hours  with  impunity. 


FINGER  NAILS.  195 


FINGER  NAILS. 

FINGER  nails  grow  out  about  three  times  a  year;  they 
should  be  trimmed  with  scissors  once  a  week,  not  so  close  as 
to  leave  no  room  for  the  dirt  to  gather,  for  then  they  do  not 
protect  the  ends  of  the  fingers,  as  was  designed  by  nature  : 
besides,  if  trimmed  too  close  at  the  corners,  there  is  danger  of 
their  growing  into  the  flesh,  causing  inconvenience,  and  some- 
times great  pain. 

The  collections  under  the  ends  of  the  nails  should  not  be 
removed  by  anything  harder  than  a  brush  or  a  soft  piece  of 
wood :  nor  should  the  nails  be  scraped  with  a  penknife  or 
other  metallic  substance,  as  it  destroys  the  delicacy  of  their 
structure,  and  will  at  length  give  them  an  unnatural  thickness. 
We  are  not  favorably  impressed  as  to  the  cleanliness  of  a 
person  who  keeps  his  nails  trimmed  to  the  quick,  as  it  is 
often  done,  to  prevent  dirt  gathering  there ;  whereas,  if  a 
margin  were  allowed,  it  would  be  an  index  to  the  cleanliness 
of  the  hands,  from  which  the  collections  under  the  finger  nails 
are  made.  Leave  a  margin,  then,  and  the  moment  you 
observe  that  these  collections  need  removal,  you  may  know 
that  the  hands  need  washing,  when  they  and  the  nails  are 
both  cleaned  together. 

Most  persons  are  familiar  with  those  troublesome  bits  of 
skin  which  loosen  at  the  root  of  the  finger  nails  :  it  is  caused 
by  the  skin  adhering  to  the  nail,  which,  growing  outward, 
drags  the  skin  along  with  it,  stretching  it  until  one  end  gives 
way.  To  prevent  this,  the  skin  should  be  loosened  from  the 
nail  once  a  week,  not  with  a  knife  or  scissors,  but  with  some- 
thing blunt,  such  as  the  end  of  an  ivory  paper  cutter.  This 
is  best  done  after  soaking  the  fingers  in  warm  water,  then 
pushing  the  skin  back  gently  and  sloAvly.  The  white  specks 
on  the  nails  are  made  by  scraping  the  nail  with  a  knife  at 
the  point  where  it  emerges  from  the  skin. 

Biting  off  the  finger  nails  is  an  uncleanly  practice  :  for  thus 
the  unsightly  collections  at  the  ends  are  kept  eaten  clean ! 
Children  may  be  broken  of  such  a  filthy  habit,  by  causing 
them  to  dip  the  ends  of  their  fingers,  several  times  a  day,  in 


196  ,  COLD  FEET. 

wormwood  bitters,  without  letting  them  know  the  object;  if 
this  is  not  sufficient,  cause  them  to  wear  caps  on  each  finger 
until  the  practice  is  discontinued. 


COLD  FEET. 

COLD  feet  are  the  avenues  to  death  of  multitudes  every 
year  :  it  is  a  sign  of  imperfect  circulation,  of  want  of  vigor  of 
constitution.  No  one  can  be  well  whose  feet  are  habitually 
cold.  When  the  blood  is  equally  distributed  to  every  part 
of  the  body,  there  is  general  good  health.  If  there  be  less 
blood  at  any  one  point  than  is  natural,  there  is  coldness ;  and 
not  only  so,  there  must  be  more  than  is  natural  at  some  other 
part  of  the  system ;  and  there  is  fever,  that  is,  unnatural  heat 
or  oppression.  In  the  case  of  cold  feet,  the  amount  of  blood 
wanting  there  collects  at  some  other  part  of  the  body,  which 
happens  to  be  the  weakest,  to  be  the  least  able  to  throw  up  a 
barricade  against  the  in-rushing  enemy.  Hence,  when  the 
lungs  are  weakest,  the  extra  blood  gathers  there  in  the  shape 
of  a  common  cold,  or  spitting  blood.  Clergymen,  other  pub- 
lic speakers,  and  singers,  by  improper  exposures,  often  render 
the  throat  the  weakest  part;  to  such,  cold  feet  give  hoarse- 
ness, or  a  raw,  burning  feeling,  most  felt  at  the  little  hollow 
at  the  bottom  of  the  neck.  To  others,  again,  whose  bowels 
are  weak  through  over-eating,  or  drinking  spirituous  liquors, 
cold  feet  give  various  degrees  of  derangement,  from  common 
looseness  up  to  diarrhoeas  or  dysentery :  and  so  we  might  go 
through  the  whole  body,  but  for  the  present,  this  is  sufficient 
for  illustration. 

If  you  are  well,  let  yourself  alone.  This  is  our  favorite 
motto.  But  to  those  whose  feet  are  inclined  to  be  cold,  we 
suggest,  — 

As  soon  as  you  get  up  in  the  morning,  put  both  feet  at 
once  in  a  basin  of  cold  water,  so  as  to  come  half  way  to  the 
ankles ;  keep  them  in  half  a  minute  in  winter,  a  minute  or 
two  in  summer,  rubbing  them  both  vigorously,  wipe  dry,  and 
hold  to  the  fire,  if  convenient,  in  cold  weather,  until  every 
part  of  the  foot  feels  as  dry  as  your  hand  ;  then  put  on  your 
socks  or  stockings. 


SLEEP.  197 

On  going  to  bed  at  night,  draw  off  your  stockings,  and  hold 
the  feet  to  the  fire  for  ten  or  fifteen  minutes,  until  perfectly 
dry,  and  get  right  into  bed.  This  is  a  most  pleasant  opera- 
tion, and  fully  repays  for  the  trouble  of  it.  No  one  can 
sleep  well  or  refreshingly  with  cold  feet.  All  Indians  and 
hunters  sleep  with  their  feet  to  the  fire. 

Never  step  from  your  bed  with  the  naked  feet  on  an  uncar- 
peted  floor.  I  have  known  it  to  be  the  exciting  cause  of 
months  of  illness. 

Wear  woollen,  cotton,  or  silk  stockings,  which  ever  keeps 
your  feet  most  comfortable  ;  do  not  let  the  experience  of  an- 
other be  your  guide,  for  different  persons  require  different 
articles :  what  is  good  for  a  person  whose  feet  are  naturally 
damp,  cannot  be  good  for  one  whose  feet  are  always  dry. 
The  donkey  who  had  his  bag  of  salt  lightened  by  swimming  a 
river,  advised  his  companion,  who  was  loaded  down  with  a 
sack  of  wool,  to  do  the  same  ;  and  having  no  more  sense  than 
a  man  or  woman,  he  plunged  in,  and  in  a  moment  the  wool 
absorbed  the  water,  increased  the  burden  many  fold,  and 
bore  *him  to  the  bottom. 


SLEEP. 

THERE  is  no  fact  more  clearly  established  in  the  physiol- 
ogy of  man  than  this,  that  the  brain  expends  its  energies  and 
itself  during  the  hours  of  wakefulness,  and  that  these  are 
recuperated  during  sleep ;  if  the  recuperation  does  not  equal 
the  expenditure,  the  brain  withers  :  this  is  insanity.  Thus  it 
is,  that  in  early  English  history,  persons  who  were  con- 
demned to  death  by  being  prevented  from  sleeping,  always 
died  raving  maniacs ;  thus  it  is,  also,  that  those  who  are 
starved  to  death  become  insane ;  the  brain  is  not  nourished, 
and  they  cannot  sleep.  The  practical  inferences  are  three  :  — 

1.  Those  who  think  mostr,  who  do  most  brain  work,  re- 
quire most  sleep. 

2.  That  time  "saved"  from  necessary  sleep,  is  infallibly 
destructive  to  mind,  body,  and  estate. 

3.  Give  yourself,  your  children,  your  servants  —  give  all 


198  SUDDEX  DEATH.  — DRAW  TEEM  UP. 

who  are  under  you  —  the  fullest  amount  of  sleep  they  will 
take,  by  compelling  them  to  go  to  bed  at  some  regular,  early 
hour,  and  to  rise  in  the  morning  the  moment  they  awake  of 
themselves ;  and  within  a  fortnight  nature,  with  almost  the 
regularity  of  the  rising  sun,  will  unloose  the  bonds  of  sleep 
the  moment  enough  repose  has  been  secured  for  the  wants  of 
the  system.  This  is  the  only  safe  and  sufficient  rule  ;  and  as 
to  the  question  how  much  sleep  any  one  requires,  each  must 
be  a  rule  for  himself;  great  nature  will  never  fail  to  write  it 
out  to  the  observer,  under  the  regulations  just  given. 


SUDDEN  DEATH. 

THE  chances  of  escaping  sudden  death  are  nearly  two  to 
one  in  favor  of  women.  Death  always  begins  at  the  head, 
the  heart,  or  the  lungs  ;  therefore,  — 

1.  Keep  the  head  cool  by  taking  the  world  easy. 

2.  Keep  the  lungs  breathing  deeply  and  fully  about  seven- 
teen times  a  minute,  by  cultivating  alacrity  in  all  the  bodily 
movements. 

3.  Keep  the  heart  beating  about  sixty-eight  times  a  minute  ^ 
that  is,  let  the  pulse  beat  four  times  while  the  lungs  breathe 
once ;    by  eating  temperately,    sleeping  fully  and   soundly, 
exercising  moderately,  and  avoiding  all  temporary  excitants, 
mental  or  liquid. 


DRAW  THEM  UP. 

You  Upper  Ten,  who  are  the  aristocracy  of  humanity,  the 
truly  elevated  and  refined,  are  you  sure  that  you  are  the 
noble  followers  of  the  glorious  old  woman,  of  whom  it  is 
recorded  in  immortal  characters  "  she  did  what  she  could  "  for 
her  poorer  kindred  race  ?  Would  you  really  like  to  see  every 
son  and  daughter  of  Adam  lifted  to  a  nearer  level  with  your- 
selves, prudent,  industrious,  well-to-do ;  possessed,  like  you, 
of  that  conscious  integrity  and  self-respect,  which  helps  them 


DRAW  THEM  UP.  199 

to  look  upward  like  men,  and  is  the  strongest  safeguard 
against  acting  downward  like  brutes?  If  so,  allow  us  to  in- 
quire if  you  are  acting  out  that  theoretical  beneficence  in  your 
every-day  life.  That  old  blacksmith  over  the  way,  all  be- 
grimed with  sweat  and  coal-dust,  you  have  known  him  well 
and  long,  you  have  paid  him  many  a  little  bill  for  tinkering, 
and  you  have  uniformly  noticed  that  he  did  his  work  prompt- 
ly and  well ;  and  you  have  noticed,  too,  his  tidy  wife  in  the 
small  house  close  by,  and  that  their  children  are  always 
dressed  cleanlily,  though  not  richly.  Well,  do  you  always 
speak  to  that  hard-working  man,  with  princely  yet  kindly 
courtesy?  If  you  don't,  you  ought  to;  and  his  wife,  you 
know  her  well,  for  she  acts  as  his  collector  sometimes.  Do 
you  now  and  then  go  a  block  or  two  out  of  your  way  as  you 
go  down  to  Wall  Street  of  a  morning,  just  to  speak  to  her  an  en- 
couraging word ;  and  when  you  pass  her  in  the  street  among  the 
multitude  of  the  more  elegantly  dressed,  do  you  give  her  a 
friendly  recognition  ?  You  cannot  think  how  so  little  a  thing  — 
one  which  costs  you  just  nothing  at  all  —  gratifies  her ;  she  will 
think  of  it  pleasurably  for  half  a  week,  and  as  she  bends  over 
the  wash-tub,  will  scrub  away  with  an  unwonted  alacrity, 
because  Mr.  Income  recognized  her  in  the  street  one  day ; 
the  very  remembrance  of  such  a  thing  increases  her  self-re- 
spect every  time  she  thinks  of  it,  and  without  being  conscious 
of  it,  she  determines  she  will  do  more  to  merit  that  recogni- 
tion, to  maintain  and  increase  your  valuation  of  her.  And 
may  be  if  you  were  to  stop  once  in  a  while  and  pat  her  little 
Tommy  on  the  head,  and  ask  him  a  pleasant  or  encouraging 
question,  or  give  him  a  shilling, — not  for  nothing,  but  for  run- 
ning some  trusty  errand,  showing  him,  in  that  delicate  way, 
that  you  have  confidence  in  him ;  thus  you  will  do  more,  by 
that  trifling  thing,  to  implant  in  him  a  feeling  of  self-respect, 
and  that  elevation  which  is  the  necessary  result  of  feeling  that 
one  is  trusted  by  a  superior,  than  you  would  do  by  a  tedious 
and  long-faced  homily  upon  morality  a  mile  long ;  lectures, 
and  sermons,  and  scolds,  and  ferules,  and  birchen  twigs,  do 
not  make  men  and  women  of  worth  of  our  children,  but  the 
indirect,  the  impressive  teachings,  such  as  we  have  hinted  at, 
do,  and  with  a  power,  too,  which  carries  all  before  it.  In 
ways  like  these,  to  draw  up  to  us  those  who  are  accidentally 


200  HEALTHFUL   CONTEMPLATIONS. 

beneath  us  in  social  position,  tells  more  towards  elevating 
humanity  than  the  taking  of  a  thousand  Malakoffs,  with  the 
immense  advantage,  instead  of  costing  whole  hecatombs  of 
butchered  humanity,  costs  nothing  at  all  but  the  exercise  of 
a  feeling  whose  very  emplojTnent  happifies  the  giver  now, 
and  yields  an  income  of  happiness  as  often  as  thought  of,  for 
the  remainder  of  life ;  it  is  a  permanent  investment,  whose 
coupons  do  not  cease  to  be  paid  even  with  the  grave,  for 
eternity  renews  and  amplifies  the  dividend. 


HEALTHFUL  CONTEMPLATIONS. 

MORAL  philosophers  live  longer  than  any  other  class  of  men, 
showing  the  influence  which  the  prevailing  state  of  the  mind 
has  on  the  human  health.  There  is  something  delightfully 
luscious  and  soul-feeding  in  the  contemplation  of  a  new  idea, 
which,  with  resistless  power,  presses  home  upon  the  heart  the 
conviction  of  the  goodness  of  God,  leaving,  as  it  often  does, 
a  feeling  of  subdued  happiness,  in  which  we  delightfully 
revel  for  a  long  time  after.  We  hold  that  contemplations 
like  these  have  a  sanitary  influence  on  mind  and  body,  which 
has  not  been  duly  estimated.  Hence,  we  hope  to  throw  out 
such  thoughts  to  the  people,  from  time  to  time,  as  will  be 
likely  to  open  up  a  fountain  of  health,  which  most  benefits 
those  who  oftenest  repair  to  it.  We  do  not  promise  that  these 
ideas  shall  be  new  to  all  of  our  readers,  but  they  will  be  new 
to  some. 

If  you  take  up  a  piece  of  slate,  or  a  common  stone,  you  will 
often  see  a  yellow,  shining  crystal,  like  brass.  The  first  im- 
pression on  the  unscientific  is,  that  it  is  gold ;  hence,  perhaps, 
the  common  saying,  "  all  is  not  gold  that  glitters."  These  yel- 
low, shining  crystals  are  formed  of  iron  and  sulphur,  and  are 
called  iron  pyrites ;  and  contain  arsenic,  yielding,  if  thrown 
into  the  fire,  arsenious  acid,  the  fumes  of  which  are  a  certain 
and  deadly  poison.  But  although  this  corroding  poison  is 
frequently  found  combined  with  iron  pyrites,  in  one  situation  it 
never  is  thus  combined  to  any  hurtful  extent ;  that  is,  in  iron 


HEALTHFUL   CONTEMPLATIONS.  201 

pyrites,  as  found  among  the  coal  formations  of  the  world,  no 
compounds  of  arsenic  have  ever  been  discovered.  Suppose, 
for  a  moment,  the  iron  pyrites  found  in  the  coal  formations  were 
like  the  iron  pyrites  of  other  localities,  the  simple  result  would 
be,  according  to  our  present  knowledge,  that  the  coal  mines  of 
the  world  would  be  useless,  because  the  fumes  which  the  coal 
would  give  out  when  placed  in  the  grate  would  be  destruc- 
tive of  human  life,  and  no  one  would  dare  employ  it  for  do- 
mestic purposes  ;  thus,  at  once,  a  mine  of  wealth,  richer  by 
far  than  the  gold  of  all  the  globe,  would  be  closed  up  as 
worse  than  worthless.  How  kindly  wise,  then,  is  that  Great 
Being  who  made  all  worlds,  in  adapting  his  creations  to  the 
safety  and  happiness  of  us,  his  children.  In  the  case  before 
us,  by  withholding  a  single  constituent  in  a  formation  under 
one  set  of  circumstances,  which  is  present  in  other  circum- 
stances, he  converts  what  otherwise  would  have  been  a  curse, 
if  used,  into  one  of  the  greatest  comforts  and  blessings  of 
civilized  life.  Further,  if  arsenic  was  found  only  sometimes 
in  the  iron  pyrites  of  the  coal  fields,  its  destructive  effects 
would  alarm  all  away  from  its  employment  under  any  circum- 
stances ;  but  the  broad  fact  stands  out  in  uniform  distinctness, 
that,  although  iron  pyrites  is  found  in  almost  every  rock, 
stratified  and  unstratified,  and  when  thus  found,  liable  to  con- 
tain arsenic,  yet,  when  found  in  the  coal  with  which  we  warm 
our  apartments,  and  cook  our  food,  and  light  our  streets,  and 
propel  our  steamships,  and  drive  our  machineries,  and  work 
our  locomotives,  in  that  coal  it  is  never  found,  in  those  forma- 
tions it  never  exists ! 

Let  us  then,  as  a  means  of  health,  feed  more  on  the  benefi- 
cences of  our  Creator ;  it  is  a  food  which  strengthens  the 
mind,  elevates  the  soul,  enlarges  the  heart,  and  leads  the 
whole  man  upward  and  onward,  by  a  pathway  full  of  light 
and  flowers  and  sunshine,  a  pathway  smooth  and  safe  and 
sure,  where  no  snare  is  ever  set,  where  lurking  dangers  never 
come,  whose  beginning  is  in  a  world  of  trial,  whose  ending  is 
in  the  bosom  of  God  1 


202  PROVIDENCE  AND  DISEASE. 


PROVIDENCE  AND  DISEASE. 

WE  do  not  believe  that  Providence  has  anything  to  do  with 
the  production  of  sickness  or  disease,  beyond  the  institution 
of  certain  laws  which  He  has  made  for  the  government  of  the 
world,  any  more  than  that  He  has  an  agency  in  the  burning  of 
our  finger,  if  we  put  it  in  the  fire.  We  think  that  veiy  many 
obituary  notices  are  impious,  so  far  as  the  agency  of  the  Al- 
mighty in  removing  valuable  lives  is  specially  charged.  That 
He  mercifully  overrules,  we  thankfully  admit ;  but  that  He 
changes  any  organic  law,  or  throws  up  miraculous  barriers  to 
resist  the  ordinary  results  of  their  infringement,  we  do  not 
believe.  Our  meaning  practically  is  this :  had  we  gone  to 
Norfolk  to  help  the  sick,  we  should  have  uttered  no  prayer 
for  protection  against  the  disease  per  se  ;  we  would  have  looked 
for  no  preternatural  shield  to  have  been  thrown  around  us ; 
but  we  would  have  steadily  sought  for  guidance  to  live  in 
such  a  manner  as  was  most  wisely  calculated  to  give  us 
strength,  vital  force  to  resist  and  to  throw  off  the  causes  of 
the  epidemic ;  we  would  have  hoped  for  no  favor  because  of 
the  humanity  of  our  mission,  but  we  would  have  looked  for 
immunity  in  proportion  as  we  lived  up  to  the  laws  of  our 
bemg.  Let  no  weak  brother  take  offence  at  this  doctrine,  but 
take  courage  when  we  assure  hmi  that  our  view  of  the  subject 
is  the  ground  of  more  heartfelt  thankfulness  than  his,  while 
its  rationality  is  so  much  the  more  ennobling.  We  feel 
thankful,  not  that  He  throws  around  us  an  abnormal,  or  preter- 
natural barrier  against  disease,  but  that  the  laws  of  our  being 
are  so  lovingly  instituted,  that  their  observance  is  inevitable 
of  safety,  health,  and  happiness,  thus  offering  the  highest  pre- 
mium for  the  cultivation  of  our  intellect  in  the  study  of  His 
ways ;  this  very  cultivation  happifying  us  here,  and  prepar- 
ing us  for  a  nearer  elevation  to  Himself  when  time  has  passed 
away. 

Norfolk  was  sickly  because  it  was  unwisely  located  :  more 
sickly  this  last  summer  than  usual,  because  its  inhabitants 
have  not  had  the  industry  and  forethought  to  remove  far 
enough  from  them  the  accumulating  garbage  of  successive 


PROVIDENCE  AND  DISEASE.  203 

years,  and  to  interpose  those  contrivances  which  an  elevated 
science  would  have  indicated,  had  she  been  importuned.  The 
elements  of  disease  have  been  accumulating  from  year  to  year 
by  a  succession  of  impressions  on  the  constitution  of  the  in- 
habitants, until  the  culminating  point  was  reached,  and  noth- 
ing more  was  wanting  to  the  terrible  explosion  but  the  appli- 
cation of  the  match,  which  was  nothing  more  than  a  greater 
variation  than  common  in  the  warmth  and  moisture  of  the 
season.  Either  of  two  things  would  have  caused  an  immedi- 
ate disappearance  of  the  pestilence  :  submerging  the  city  and 
suburbs  with  a  foot  deep  of  running  water,  or  a  temperature 
steadily  below  seventy  degrees  of  Fahrenheit.  The  reason 
for  these  sentiments  are  not  given  now,  but  we  propose  doing 
so  in  some  more  inviting  form  in  a  future  article.  We  merely 
hint  enough  to  set  our  intelligent  readers  thinking.  We  love 
to  make  people  think ;  it  is  only  the  thoughtful  who  are  of 
any  account  in  a  world  like  this ;  it  is  the  thoughtless,  the 
heedless  multitude,  who  heap  want  and  calamity  and  disease 
on  themselves,  and  on  too  many  of  those  with  whom  they  are 
brought  in  frequent  association.  Now  for  the  bone  to  pick ; 
untying  the  Gordian  knot. 

A  heat  of  ninety  degrees  will  always  generate  miasm  in 
damp  and  dirty  localities.  This  miasm  is  the  cause  of  epi- 
demic diseases,  but  it  cannot  rise  through  running  water,  nor 
can  it  exist  as  such  at  seventy  degrees.  The  reason  that  epi- 
demics do  not  promptly  abate  on  the  advent  of  either  of  the 
conditions  named,  is,  that  at  any  given  time  there  are  some 
symptoms  just  ripening  into  disease.  The  great  practical 
lesson  taught  by  these  considerations  is,  that  in  times  of 
individual  or  general  sickness  our  wisdom  consists  in  indus- 
triously searching  out  and  removing  the  causes  of  disease, 
looking  humbly  to  God  for  suggestive  guidance  in  these  in- 
vestigations, for  strength  in  the  prosecution  of  our  activities, 
with  thankful  reliance  on  the  triumphant  working  of  the  laws 
which  He  has  ordained. 


204  EQUANIMITY  OF  MIND. 


EQUANIMITY  OF  MIND. 

How  health-saving,  how  dignified,  how  philosophical !  per 
contra,  the  fiery  folk,  the  'lapdog  sort,  how  terribly  fierce 
they  are  !  in  a  moment  blazing  hot  —  about  nothing,  when 
you  come  to  examine  into  the  merits  of  the  case.  Spasmodic 
people,  who  take  the  world  by  fits  and  starts  ;  in  the  skies  to- 
day, to-morrow  —  in  the  cellar !  everything,  anything,  noth- 
ing :  doubtless  they  have  their  uses,  like  the  insect  of  an 
hour,  or  an  atom  in  the  air,  but  if  ever  any  single  individual 
of  this  not  innumerous  tribe  came  to  anything,  we  have  yet 
to  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  the  fact ;  their  more  obvious 
uses  are,  by  misapprehensions,  to  set  people  by  the  ears,  to 
excite  family  quarrels,  and  originate  ill-will  among  neighbors. 
Whipper-snappers  are  they,  busybodies,  never  happier  than 
when  up  to  their  eyes  in  other  people's  business,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  their  own ;  marvellously  benevolent  towards  every 
body  else  but  their  own  wives  and  children.  The  end  of  such 
is  to  die  early,  and  to  die  poor ;  or,  if  they  live  long,  their 
lives  are  more  a  burden  than  a  blessing  to  the  community 
among  whom  it  was  their  lot  to  fall. 

Widely  different  is  the  aim  and  end  of  the  man  who  takes 
the  world  calmly,  who  takes  time  .to  make  himself  master  of 
the  whole  fact,  before  he  moves  a  step ;  such  a  man  seldom 
acts  wrong,  is  seldom  found  in  a  false  position,  and  is  conse- 
quently under  no  necessity  of  resorting  to  humiliating  quib- 
bles, or  even  questionable  expedients,  to  extricate  him  from  a 
predicament ;  the  necessary  result  being,  in  the  course  of 
years,  an  abiding  impression  on  his  own  mind  that  he  has  act- 
ed right  in  all  things ;  and  being  conscious  of  no  wrong,  of  no 
quibble,  feels  always  safe,  is  subject  to  no  unpleasant  sur- 
prises. Such  a  man,  having  no  ground  for  apprehensions, 
and  yet  being  open  to  all  the  enjoyments  which  other  men 
are,  has  that  stereotyped  equanimity  of  mind  which,  while  it 
closes  the  gate  against  the  host  of  ills  which  wrong-doing 
entails  on  the  wicked,  opens  a  door  to  pleasures  innumerable, 
boundless  !  These  are  the  men  who  uniformly  "  succeed  "  in 
life,  in  any  country  and  in  every  clime ;  —  succeed,  not  mere- 


WEARING  FLANNEL.  205 

ly  in  the  accumulation  of  money,  but  in  that  which  is  of 
greater  worth,  in  securing  a  position  in  society,  and  a  name, 
which  is  the  synonyme  for  all  that  is  solid,  manly,  and  good  ; 
not  only  so,  the  pulses  of  life  beating  regularly,  they  neces- 
sarily beat  long,  for  the  system  is  subject  to  no  shocks,  is 
racked  by  no  explosions  :  so  that  they  have  not  only  made 
a  fortune  and  a  name,  but  secured  long  life  to  enjoy  them, 
that  very  enjoyment  consolidating  both. 

This  is  not  a  beautiful  theory  spun  out  at  our  own  office-fire 
of  a  bright  frosty  morning  in  December,  nor  yet  under  the 
unreliable  exhilaration  of  a  cup  of  tea,  or  a  glass  of  wine,  but 
it  is  the  result  of  convictions  founded  on  the  observation  of 
men  and  things,  confirmed  by  a  living  truth,  in  the  persons 
of  a  whole  community  of  people,  whose  increasing  fewness  in 
the  Old  World,  as  well  as  in  the  New,  we  on  some  accounts  do 
sincerely  deplore  :  we  mean  the  "  Society  of  Friends,"  com- 
monly called  Quakers.  Recent  published  statistics  in  Eng- 
land show,  that  while  the  average  duration  of  human  life  is 
estimated  at  thirty-three  years,  that  average  among  these  peo- 
ple is  fifty-one  years ;  exhibiting  thus  this  broad,  practical 
fact,  that  a  course  of  life  which  promotes  an  habitual  equa- 
nimity of  mind,  the  feature  which  stands  out  above  all  others 
in  the  every-day  character  of  Friends,  in  this  country  as  well 
as  in  England,  is  highly  conducive  to  bodily  health  and  length 
of  days. 


WEARING  FLANNEL. 

PUT  it  on  at  once.  Winter  or  summer,  nothing  better  can 
be  worn  next  the  skin  than  a  loose,  red  woollen  flannel  shirt ; 
"  loose,"  for  it  has  room  to  move  on  the  skin,  thus  causing  a 
titillation,  which  draws  the  blood  to  the  surface  and  keeps  it 
there  ;  and  when  that  is  the  case,  no  one  can  take  cold  ;  "  red," 
for  white  flannel  fulls  up,  mats  together,  and  becomes  tight, 
stiff,  heavy,  and  impervious ;  "  woollen,"  the  product  of  a 
sheep,  and  not  of  a  gentleman  of  color  —  not  of  cotton-wool, 
because  that  merely  absorbs  the  moisture  from  the  surface, 
while  woollen  flannel  conveys  it  from  the  skin  and  deposits  it 
in  drops  on  the  outside  of  the  shirt,  from  which  the  ordinary 


206  .  KEEP  TOUR  MOUTH  SHUT. 

cotton  shirt  absorbs  it,  and  by  its  nearer  exposure  to  the  ex- 
terior air,  it  is  soon  dried  without  injury  to  the  body.  Hav- 
ing these  properties,  red  woollen  flannel  is  worn  by  sailors, 
even  in  the  midsummer  of  the  hottest  countries.  Wear  a 
thinner  material  in  summer. 


KEEP  YOUR  MOUTH  SHUT. 

KEEP  your  mouth  shut,  all  you  that  will  keep  late  hours  in 
cold  winter  nights,  in  crowded,  heated  rooms,  until  animal 
vigor  and  mental  sprightliness  are  exhausted,  and  yet  must 
breast  the  bleak  winds  of  January  to  get  home.  I  see  noth- 
ing amiss  in  the  festivities  of  friends,  and  neighbors,  and 
kindred,  of  evenings  :  better  that  than  moping  at  home  : 
nothing  amiss  in  the  glad  reunions  of  the  young  and  cheery- 
hearted,  even  though  they  may  be  extended,  once  in  a  while, 
to  the  "wee  short  hours  ayant  the  twal."  I  love  to  see  glad- 
ness in  all,  at  any  hour  of  the  twenty-four;  but  to  do  these 
things  safely  and  long,  make  it  a  practice  to  observe  two  or 
three  simple  and  easy  precautions. 

Before  you  leave,  bundle  up  well  —  gloves,  cloak,  com- 
forter. Shut  your  mouth  before  you  open  the  street  door, 
and  keep  it  resolutely  closed  until  you  have  walked  briskly 
for  some  ten  minutes ;  then,  if  you  keep  on  walking,  or  have 
reached  your  home,  you  may  talk  as  much  as  you  please. 
By  not  so  doing,  many  a  heart,  once  happy  and  young,  now 
lies  in  the  churchyard,  that  might  have  been  young  and  happy 
still.  But  how?  If  you  keep  your  mouth  closed,  and  walk 
rapidly,  the  air  can  only  reach  the  lungs  by  the  circuit  of  the 
nose  and  head,  and  becomes  warmed  before  reaching  the 
lungs,  thus  causing  no  derangement ;  but  if  you  converse, 
large  draughts  of  cold  air  dash  directly  in  upon  the  lungs, 
chilling  the  whole  frame  almost  instantly.  The  brisk  walking 
throws  the  blood  to  the  surface  of  the  body,  thus  keeping 
up  a  vigorous  circulation ;  making  a  cold  impossible,  if  you 
don't  get  into  a  cold  bed  too  quick  after  you  get  home. 
Neglect  of  these  brings  sickness  and  premature  death  to 
multitudes  every  year. 


THERMOMETERS.  207 


THERMOMETERS. 

THERMOMETERS,  if  properly  used,  might  be  made  one  of  the 
most  money-saving  articles  of  the  household.  There  should 
be  a  thermometer  in  every  chamber  in  the  house,  one  in  each 
hall  or  passage,  and  a  large  one  at  some  easily  accessible 
northern  exposure  out  of  doors,  with  a  red  column,  and 
which  could  be  seen  without  opening  a  door  or  window. 
They  should  be  hung  about  five  feet  from  the  floor,  not  only 
for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the  children  to  see  the  index,  but 
as  indicating  the  temperature  of  the  air  which  is  breathed : 
as  that  at  the  floor  is  coldest,  while  that  at  the  ceiling  is  the 
most  heated,  as  well  as  the  most  impure.  With  these  facili- 
ties, we  can  tell  accurately  whether  our  apartments  are  of  a 
proper  temperature,  and  also  whether  to  put  on  more  and 
heavier  or  lighter  garments  in  the  morning.  By  attention 
to  these  things  we  will  save  ourselves  time  and  Buffering,  and 
many  a  doctor's  bill ;  one  of  which  would  supply  every  room 
in  the  house  with  these  useful  articles,  which,  when  once  pur- 
chased, last  for  life,  if  taken  care  of. 

Speaking  of  changing  the  clothing,  we  consider  it  hazard- 
ous to  lessen  its  amount  after  dressing  in  the  morning,  unless 
active  exercise  is  taken  immediately.  No  under-garment 
should  be  changed  for  lighter  ones  during  the  day,  ordi- 
narily. The  best,  safest,  and  most  convenient  time  for  les- 
sening the  clothing,  is  in  the  morning,  when  we  first  dress 
for  the  day.  Hence  the  first  thing,  after  rising,  should  be 
to  notice  the  thermometer.  If  you  have  but  one,  place  it 
outside  before  getting  into  bed.  Not  less  than  twenty  de- 
grees from  the  temperature  of  the  preceding  morning  should 
justify  any  special  change  in  the  clothing,  unless  persons  are 
very  sensitive. 

There  is  a  moral  advantage  in  thermometers  which  merits 
the  attention  of  every  parent.  All  children  love  novelty,  — 
which  is  nothing  less  than  knowledge  to  them,  —  and  they 
will  take  as  much  interest  in  what  is  usefully  true  as  in  what 
is  viciously  so.  You  have  only  to  turn  their  attention,  in  a 
kindly,  encouraging,  and  judicious  way,  to  the  rise  and  fall 


208  CORNS. 

of  the  mercury,  and  keeping  a  memorandum  of  it,  in  order 
to  insure  to  them  agreeable  employment  for  many  an  hour  in 
the  year,  and  to  consequent  reflection,  which  we  all  know  is 
the  first  step  towards  manliness  and  distinction.  Make  a 
child  reflective,  and  he  is  safe  for  life.  Get  your  children 
interested  in  observing  natural  truths,  and  you  will  have  but 
little  trouble  in  keeping  them  out  of  street  associations ;  so 
that  the  purchase,  and  proper  use,  of  a  fifty-cent  thermom- 
eter, may  be,  to  any  child,  the  difference  between  a  life  of 
disease  and  viciousness,  or  one  of  health  and  virtue ;  the 
difference  between  a  life  lost,  and  a  man  saved  to  his  country 
and  his  race. 


CORN  S. 

CORNS  are  nature's  barricades.  The  skin  hardens  itself  in 
order  to  afford  protection  to  the  inner  and  more  delicate  parts 
against  an  ill-fitting  shoe  ;  for  whether  too  tight  or  too  loose, 
the  result  is  similar. 

Corns  are  the  deserved  punishments  of  all  pretenders  and 
make-believes.  You  endeavored,  when  younger,  to  persuade 
people  to  think  that  your  understandings  were  less  extensive 
than  they  really  were  —  illoK  hinc  lacrymce;  hence  those  out- 
bursts of  passion  which  invaded  corns  daily  give  rise  to. 
How  instinctively  is  fended  off"  the  tread  of  youth  and  beauty 
even,  by  the  gallant  beau  of  forty-five  I  What  unpleasant 
reminiscences  of  our  infirmities  are  these  self-same  corns  in 
dull  weather,  the  very  time  when  we  need  some  extra  exhila- 
ration I  A  man,  whom  I  did  not  know  from  Adam,  came  into 
my  office  yesterday,  sat  down  vis-a-vis,  took  me  by  the  hand. 
"I'll  read  you  through,  from  infancy  up,"  said  he.  "Read 
away,"  said  I. 

I  fixed  my  eyes  on  the  ceiling,  he  his  on  the  carpet  for  a 
"spell,"  as  Jonathan  would  say. 

"  What  a  kindly  nature  I  "  was  his  abrupt  exclamation ; 
"  kind  towards  everybody  and  everything ;  generous  to  a 
fault,  decidedly  frank,  —  too  much  so  for  your  own  good, — 
free.  You  were  born  in  Kentucky,  in  one  of  the  inland 
counties,  where  there  were  many  girded  treos  standing;  in 


CORNS.  209 

a  log-house,  not  two  stories  high,  and  more  than  one ;  the 
upper  windows  were  smaller  than  those  below.  I  see  a  door, 
with  a  window  on  one  side,  and  perhaps  on  the  other,  with 
casings  around  them ;  a  temporary  shed  at  one  end  of  the 
house,  the  right ;  while  to  the  left  and  back  the  ground 
trended  rapidly  away,"  &c. 

But  what  in  the  world  has  this  to  do  with  corns  on  people's 
toes?  It  was  pertinent  enough,  if  we  had  stopped  at  the  right 
place  ;  but  our  pen-editorial  is  like  two  things  :  first,  like  the 
man  with  a  cork  leg,  it  worked  so  well,  that  when  he  got  once 
started  he  couldn't  stop :  so  he  has  been  going  ever  since  — 
shouldn't  wonder  if  he  had  got  to  the  other  side  of  the  moon 
by  this  time  ;  second,  like  that  member  of  Scripture  classics, 
belonging  to  one  of  our  household. 

:'  What  a  kindly  nature!  "  We  should  have  stopped  there, 
and  given  an  illustration,  in  the  fact  of  our  being  so  benevo- 
lent as  to  publish  to  the  world  a  cure  for  corns,  — infallible, 
— for  nothing  I 

Never  let  anything  harder  than  your  finger-nail  ever  touch 
a  corn ;  paring  it  as  certainly  makes  it  take  deeper  root  as 
cutting  a  weed  off  at  the  surface.  The  worst  kind  of  corns 
are  controllable,  as  follows  :  — 

Soak  the  feet  in  quite  warm  water  for  half  an  hour  before 
going  to  bed ;  then  rub  on  the  corn  with  your  finger,  for  sev- 
eral minutes,  some  common  sweet  oil.  Do  this  every  night; 
and  every  morning  repeat  this  rubbing  in  of  oil  with  the 
finger.  Bind  on  the  toe,  during  the  day,  two  or  three  thick- 
nesses of  buckskin,  with  a  hole  in  the  centre  to  receive  the 
corn.  In  less  than  a  week,  in  ordinary  cases,  if  the  corn  does 
not  fall  out,  you  can  pinch  it  out  with  the  finger-nail ;  and 
weeks,  and  sometimes  mo»ths,  will  pass  away  before  you  will 
be  reminded  that  you  had  a  corn ;  when  you  can  repeat  the 
process.  Corns,  like  consumption,  are  never  cured ;  but  may 
be  indefinitely  postponed.  The  oil  and  soaking  softens  and 
loosens  the  corn,  while  the  buckskin  protects  it  from  press- 
ure, which  makes  it,  perhaps,  to  be  pushed  out  by  the  under- 
growth of  the  parts. 


210  PRESERVED  SUNSHINE. 


PRESERVED   SUNSHINE. 

LIGHT  and  life  are  inseparable  ;  that  is,  such  was  the  gen- 
erally received  opinion  many  years  ago,  and  in  accordance 
with  it,  houses  were  built  liberally  supplied  with  windows, 
and  as  liberally  now ;  but  go  along  any  of  the  fashionable 
streets  of  New  York,  and  you  will  find  not  less  than  three, 
and  often  six,  distinct  contrivances  to  keep  out  the  sunshine 
and  gladness.  First,  the  Venetian  shutter  on  the  outside ; 
second,  the  close  shutter  on  the  inside  ;  third,  the  blind  which 
is  moved  by  rollers ;  then,  fourthly,  there  are  the  lace  cur- 
tains ;  fifth,  the  damask,  or  other  material,  ditto. 

In  the  same  train  comes  the  exclusion  of  external  air,  by 
means  of  double  sash,  and  a  variety  of  patent  contrivances  to 
keep  any  little  stray  whiff  of  air  from  entering  at  the  bottom, 
sides,  and  tops  of  doors  and  windows.  At  this  rate  we  will 
in  due  time  dwindle  into  Liliputs,  if,  indeed,  we  do  not  die 
off  sooner,  with  all  science  and  art,  and  leave  the  world  to 
begin  anew,  from  the  few  sons  of  the  forest  who  persisted  in 
eschewing  civilization.  We  lay  it  down  as  a  health  axiom  — 
The  more  out-door  air  and  cheery  sunshine  a  man  can  use,  the 
longer  he  will  live. 

But  the  preserved  sunshine  !  What  about  it  ?  That  very 
same  sunshine  which  so  lavishly  beamed  upon  our  continent, 
with  all  its  tropical  fervor,  in  the  earlier  ages  of  creation, 
what  has  become  of  it?  A  casual  reader  will  exclaim,  "  What 
a  fool  of  a  question  that  is  !  "  Let  us  leisurely  inquire  into  it ; 
but  in  doing  so,  we  must  take  it  for  granted  that  the  reader 
knows  something. 

In  Central  America,  where  the  sun  shines  with  all  its  bril- 
liancy and  fierceness,  vegetation  is  of  fabulous  growth,  of  a 
luxuriance  almost  incredible. 

But  how  does  a  tree  grow?  Without  light  no  wood  is 
made  in  any  vegetable  growth ;  the  woody  fibre  is  formed 
from  carbonic  acid  gas  being  absorbed  by  the  leaves  and 
through  the  bark  of  any  growth.  But  light  separates  the  two 
constituents  which  compose  this  carbonic  acid  gas,  carbon  and 
oxygen,  and  two  different  uses  are  made  of  it ;  the  oxygen  is 


PRESERVED   SUNSHINE.  211 

liberated,  thrown  out,  and  breathed  by  animals  and  men, 
while  the  carbon  or  "  coal "  goes  to  form  the  woody  fibre  of 
the  plant,  which  presents  a  kind  of  ring,  plainly  seen  in  saw- 
ing through  any  tree,  the  number  of  rings  indicating  the  age 
of  the  tree  in  years ;  some  of  these  rings  are  broader,  some 
narrower,  indicating,  most  probably,  the  more  or  less  sunshine 
of  that  year,  for  a  plant  will  not  grow  as  much  in  a  cold  sum- 
mer as  in  a  warm  one.  In  a  section  of  a  California  tree,  a 
part  of  which  we  have  in  our  office,  more  than  two  thousand 
such  rings  were  counted,  showing  that  these  trees  must  have 
lived  in  the  times  of  David,  and  perhaps  of  Abraham. 

In  the  earlier  ages  of  the  world,  some  great  flood  or  floods 
swept  over  the  immense  growths  of  the  warmer  climes,  which 
then,  no  doubt,  included  what  is  now  called  Ohio  and  Penn- 
sylvania. In  process  of  time,  this  growth  was  covered  with 
earth  and  stones,  and  eventually  became  "coal,"  the  anthracite 
and  bituminous,  with  which  we  are  so  familiar;  and  the 
very  identical  carbon,  which  the  sunlight  of  ages  ago  separ- 
ated for  the  purpose  of  vegetation,  is  now,  by  its  combi- 
nation with  its  old  associate,  oxygen,  returning  to  its  original 
condition  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  and  in  making  that  change,  by 
what  we  call  "burning,"  warms  our  houses,  lights  up  our 
streets,  and  is  preparing  to  grease  our  rail-cars  by  the  oil 
which  it  is  capable  of  yielding. 

Such,  reader,  are  some  of  His  ways,  who  ruleth  the  world 
in  loving-kindness ;  in  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  years 
ago,  He  commenced  processes  for  laying  up  in  store  a  mate- 
rial, which  in  these  latter  ages  is  such  an  essential  agent  for 
the  advancement  of  civilization — the  "  coal-beds"  of  the  world  ; 
for  without  them  our  manufactories  would  stop,  our  mills 
and  engines  rust,  and  cold  and  privation,  with  their  attend- 
ant diseases,  would  sweep  from  the  world  the  race  of  civil- 
ized men. 


212  SUNDAY  DINNERS. 


SUNDAY  DINNERS. 

THAT  it  is  humane  to  have  as  little  cooking  done  on  Sunday, 
and  thus  giving  as  much  rest  to  our  servants  as  practicable, 
no  one  will  deny. 

As  to  the  healthfulness  of  a  cold  dinner  on  Sundays,  a  mo- 
ment's reflection  will  be  conclusive. 

As  we  take  very  much  less  exercise  on  the  Sabbath  day  than 
when  engaged  in  our  ordinary  avocations,  we  need  that  much 
less  food.  No  one  can  eat  as  much  of  a  cold  dinner  as  he 
would  if  it  were  smoking  hot.  There  is  no  danger  of  our  not 
eating  enough  dinner  on  Sundays,  let  it  be  ever  so  cold  and 
uninviting  ;  for  if  any  business  man  would  take  nothing  at  all 
for  his  Sunday  dinner,  and  for  the  following  supper  were  to 
drink  a  single  cup  of  any  kind  of  tea,  weak  and  hot,  and  eat 
with  it  a  bit  of  toast  or  a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  he 
would  be  all  the  better  for  it  in  mind  and  body  next  day  ;  and 
would  go  to  his  business  on  a  Monday  morning  with  a  vigor 
and  elasticity  which  that  man  never  knows  who  makes  his 
Sunday  dinner  the  dinner  of  the  week. 

Taking  so  much  less  exercise  on  Sundays  than  on  a  week- 
day, and  stimulated  to  eat  more  on  that  day  by  its  superior 
excellency,  aided  by  idleness,  there  is  of  necessity  a  repletion, 
an  over-supply  of  food,  which  will  be  as  certainly  disastrous 
as  the  feeding  of  a  locomotive  with  more  fuel  while  she  is 
standing  still  than  when  she  is  going  ahead  with  her  long 
retinue  of  passengers  and  freight. 

But  in  a  sober,  religious  point  of  view,  those  inviting  Sun- 
day dinners  are  not  judicious ;  the  nervous  energy  is  drawn 
to  the  stomach  in  extreme  quantities,  in  order  to  dispose  of 
the  over-load,  leaving  the  brain  scantily  supplied,  causing 
dulness,  drowsiness,  and  almost  stupidity,  wholly  unfitting  the 
mind  for  proper  attention  to  the  religious  exercises  of  the 
afternoon,  the  palpable  cause  of  wasted  sermons,  of  wasted 
opportunities.  This  subject  is  worth  a  serious  thought  on  the 
part  of  pious  people,  especially  those  who  have  a  growing 
family.  Cold  bread  and  meat,  with  pie  or  baked  apples,  and 
a  single  cup  of  good  hot  tea  or  coffee,  make  a  good  enough 
Sunday  dinner  for  anybody. 


MEDICAL  FANTASIES.  213 


MEDICAL  FANTASIES. 

ONE  of  the  earliest  Hydropathic  prescriptions  we  read  of 
was  recorded  long  before  the  days  of  Priessnitz ;  it  was  given 
by  an  Ass  to  a  brother  Ass,  was  followed  instanter,  to  the 
death,  and  has  been  kept  in  the  same  style  ever  since.  The 
legend  goes  in  this  wise  :  — 

Two  donkeys  were  travelling  one  hot  summer's  day,  heav- 
ily laden,  one  with  a  sack  of  wool,  the  other  with  a  sack  of 
salt.  Almost  exhausted  with  heat  and  fatigue,  they  came  at 
length  to  a  river;  and,  wisely  enough,  it  was  concluded  that 
one  should  try  the  ford  first.  The  one  with  the  salt  plunged 
in,  and  on  reaching  the  opposite  shore  safely,  found  himself 
so  much  refreshed  by  the  cooling  of  the  waters,  and  so  invig- 
orated was  he,  that  he  felt  all  at  once  as  if  he  had  no  load  at 
all,  —  as  if  he  could  carry  two  or  three  sacks  more;  and, 
being  naturally  benevolent,  he  urged  his  companion  to  lose  no 
time,  and  plunge  into  the  stream,  triumphantly  pleading  his 
own  delightful  experience ;  so  Assy  number  two  jumped  in, 
according  to  directions,  and — was  crushed  to  the  earth. 

We  scarcely  need  remind  the  reader,  that  in  the  first  in- 
stance the  salt  was  dissolved  and  passed  down  the  stream, 
while  the  wool,  absorbing  more  water,  became  more  weighty, 
and  hence  the  very  signal  failure  of  the  prescription. 

The  wisest  among  men  may  learn  a  useful  lesson  from  this 
homely  fable.  It  is  this  reasoning  a-la-donkey  that  fills  the 
world  with  errors,  not  only  in  medicine,  but  in  morals ;  not 
merely  errors  in  theory,  but  in  practice  ;  pervading  every  pro- 
fession and  every  calling  of  human  life.  The  mischief  arises 
from  confounding  cause  and  effect  with  antecedence  and  subse- 
quence. If  I  faint  and  fall  to  the  earth,  and  cold  water  is 
thrown  in  my  face,  I  "come  to;  "  if  spirits  of  hartshorn  be 
applied  to  the  nose,  the  same  result  is  observed;  hence  these 
methods  are  resorted  to  the  world  over,  and  the  cold  water 
and  the  hartshorn  have  the  credit  of  restoration,  but  erro- 
neously ;  they  were  applied,  and  the  restoration  followed,  but 
this  was  merely  antecedence  and  subsequence  ;  the  water  was 
not  the  cause  of  the  restoration,  nor  was  the  restoration  the 


214  MEDICAL  FANTASIES. 

effect  of  the  application  of  the  water,  for  if  a  fainting  man  be 
laid  upon  his  back,  he  will  come  to  by  simply  being  let  alone, 
and  in  a  much  more  gentle,  gradual,  and  agreeable  way,  with- 
out being  shocked  almost  out  of  his  senses,  or  having  his  best 
clothes  all  drabbled  over  with  water.  The  real  cause  of  res- 
toration is  natural  reaction ;  it  is  a  something  which  is  kindly 
and  wisely  made  a  part  of  our  being  by  Him  whose  ways  to 
men  are  goodness  and  love  personified  ;  the  name  of  this  be- 
nign agency  is  beautifully  denominated  the  Vis  Medicatrix 
Naturcz,  the  power  which  nature  has  of  curing  herself.  This 
is  the  doctor  patronized  by  all  regular  physicians  ;  but  as  no 
amount  of  argument  would  persuade  the  common  people  to  do 
the  same,  we  pass  the  point  for  the  purpose  of  having  a  little 
fun  at  the  expense  of  great  men. 

Taking  a  mere  subsequence  for  an  effect,  the  great  Martin 
Luther  declared,  "  If  you  run  a  stick  through  three  frogs,  dry 
them  in  the  sun,  and  apply  them  to  any  pestilent  tumor,  they 
draw  out  all  poison,  and  the  malady  will  disappear."  Sup- 
pose the  frogs  had  been  guillotined  or  hung,  and  then  dried 
in  the  sun,  it  is  not  likely  they  would  have  been  less  effica- 
cious. It  requires  some  considerable  time,  especially  in  win- 
ter, to  dry  a  frog  ;  meanwhile  the  "  pestilent  tumor  "  would  pass 
its  crisis,  and  get  well  of  itself.  Modern  wisdom  has  improved 
on  Luther's  prescription,  for  it  has  discovered  that  a  chicken 
split  open,  and  applied  while  warm,  is  of  sovereign  efficacy  in 
similar  cases.  The  thing  that  cures  is  not  the  stuck  frog  nor 
the  divided  pullet,  but  keeping  the  parts  soothingly  moist  and 
warm  for  some  time  without  disturbance.  A  poultice  made 
of  flax-seed  or  bread  and  milk  would  have  all  the  virtues  of 
the  frog  or  the  chicken,  with  the  no  small  advantage  of  being 
more  instantly  available.  It  would  require  some  considerable 
hunting  to  secure  three  frogs  in  New  York,  or  anywhere,  in 
midwinter,  and  as  for  our  chickens,  they  are  all  dead  a  long 
time  ago,  long  enough  to  grow  very  tender. 

The  great  Bishop  Berkeley,  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
and  best  educated  men  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  wrote  a 
book  "  concerning  the  virtues  of  tar-water"  advocating  its 
efficacy  in  coughs,  colds,  and  consumption,  dropsies,  fevers, 
and  small-pox.  Some  people  made  fun  of  the  bishop,  but  he 
confidently  appealed  to  time  and  observation.  But  time  is  a 


MEDICAL  FANTASIES.  215 

slow  coach  for  the  bishop,  as  a  hundred  and  ten  years  have 
failed  to  certify  his  theory.  One  day  the  bishop  was  taken 
suddenly  ill,  but  he  hadn't  a  bit  of  tar  in  his  house,  and  be- 
fore any  could  be  had,  he  —  died.  It  was  a  great  over- 
sight that,  not  to  have  had  two  or  three  barrels  of  tar  stowed 
away  in  his  house  to  meet  emergencies.  Bacon  believed 
that  the  application  of  ointment  to  a  weapon  which  inflicted  a 
wound,  was  more  efficacious  than  if  it  were  applied  to  the 
wound  itself;  and  the  great  Boyle  believed  that  the  thigh-bone 
of  a  criminal  who  had  suffered  death  was  a  cure  for  some 
bowel  affections,  which  indeed  is  a  fact,  with  this  limitation : 
any  other  bone  of  any  other  man,  brute  or  beast,  if  burned 
and  pulverized,  would  have  been  equally  efficacious ;  quite  as 
efficacious  as  a  remedy  once  uttered  in  our  hearing :  "  A 
chicken's  gizzard  well  boiled,  then  burnt  to  a  cinder,  then 
finely  pulverized  and  swallowed ;  a  cure  for  the  diarrhoea."  And 
so  it  is  in  some  forms  ;  but  burnt  cork  is  equally  efficacious  ; 
and  it  is  quite  likely,  in  fact  certain,  that  a  tablespoonful  of 
tadpoles  or  shrimps,  or  a  good  big  crawfish,  burned  to  a  cin- 
der, then  pulverized,  would  avail  as  much.  But  instead  of 
regarding  these  outre  articles  as  having  medicinal  merits,  or 
being  the  cause  of  cure,  we  should  endeavor  to  ascertain 
whether  there  was  not  some  one  quality  common  to  all,  and 
whether  there  was  not  reason  to  believe  that  all  the  virtue 
resided  in  that  one  quality.  At  the  first  glance  we  perceive 
that  innocuous,  impalpable  fineness  is  the  great  requisite ; 
hence,  in  certain  forms  and  stages  of  loose  bowels,  we  find 
that  the  nitrate  of  bismuth,  or  a  tablespoon  of  fine  flour 
stirred  in  a  little  cold  water,  and  drank  quickly,  are  both  very 
reliable  remedies ;  but  let  no  reader  illustrate  his  genealogy 
by  running  to  the  flour-barrel  the  next  time  he  has  a  loose 
visitation  ;  for  if  it  be  a  bilious  diarrhoea,  it  will  do  no  good  ; 
if  it  be  the  premonitory  of  cholera,  the  delay  might  be  death  ; 
or  if  it  be  the  looseness  of  a  surfeit,  the  flour  would  have  no 
effect :  in  either  of  these  cases,  show  yourself  a  sensible  man, 
by  lying  down  and  sending  for  your  family  physician. 

The  great  lesson  we  desire  to  inculcate  in  this  article  is,  — 
If  you  would  avoid  serious  errors,  do  not  confound  mere  sub- 
sequents  with  causes  in  your  philosophy  ;  such  a  mistake  is  the 
rock  on  which  millions  have  wrecked  all  human  hopes,  and 
millions  more  will  do  the  same. 


216  HARD  STUDY. 


HARD    STUDY. 

HARD  study  hurts  nobody,  but  hard  eating  hurts  many.  It 
is  a  very  common  thing  to  attribute  the  premature  disability  or 
death  of  students  and  eminent  men  to  too  close  application  to 
their  studies.  It  has  now  become  to  be  a  generally  admitted 
truth  that  "hard  study,"  as  it  is  called,  endangers  life.  It  is 
a  mischievous  error  that  severe  mental  application  undermines 
health.  Unthinking  people  will  dismiss  this  with  the  exclama- 
tion of,  "That's  all  stuff!"  or  something  equally  conclusive. 
To  those  who  search  after  truth,  in  the  love  of  it,  we  wish  to 
offer  some  suggestions. 

Many  German  scholars  have  studied,  for  a  lifetime,  for 
sixteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  and  a  very  large  num- 
ber from  twelve  to  fifteen  hours ;  lived  in  comparative  health, 
and  died  beyond  the  sixties. 

A  strong  example  of  the  truth  that  health  and  hard  study 
are  not  incompatible,  is  found  in  the  great  Missourian,  Thomas 
H.  Benton.  A  more  severe  student  than  he  has  been,  the 
American  public  does  not  know.  Dr.  Charles  Caldwell,  our 
honored  preceptor,  lived  beyond  the  eighties,  with  high 
bodily  health,  remarkable  physical  vigor,  and  mental  force 
scarcely  abated ;  yet,  for  a  great  part  of  his  life,  he  studied 
fifteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  and,  at  one  time,  gave 
but  five  hours  to  sleep.  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  old  man 
eloquent,  is  another  equally  strong  example  of  our  position. 
All  these  men,  with  the  venerable  Dr.  Nott,  made  the  preser- 
vation of  health  a  scientific  study  ;  and,  by  systematic  tem- 
perance, neither  blind  nor  spasmodic,  secured  the  prize  for 
which  they  labored,  and  with  it  years,  usefulness,  and  honor. 

The  inculcation  of  these  important  truths  was  precisely  the 
object  we  had  in  view  in  the  projection  of  this  work ;  with 
the  more  immediate  practical  application  to  the  clergy  of  this 
country,  whom  we  see  daily  disabled  or  dying,  scores  of 
years  before  their  time,  not,  as  is  uniformly  and  benevolently 
stated,  from  their  "arduous  labors,"  but  by  a  persistent  and 
inexcusable  ignorance  of  the  laws  of  life  and  health,  and  a 
wicked  neglect  of  them.  We  use  this  strong  language  pur- 


CIVILIZATION  AND  HEALTH.  217 

posely ;  for  ignorance  of  duty  to  their  own  bodies  is  no  more 
excusable  than  ignorance  of  duty  to  their  own  souls  ;  for  upon 
both  classes  of  duty  the  lights  brightly  shine,  full  bright 
enough  for  all  practical  purposes, — the  lights  of  nature,  of 
science,  of  experience,  and  of  grace.  How  much  of  the  hard, 
intolerant  theology  of  the  times  was  concocted,  and  is  per- 
petuated, by  dyspeptic  stomachs,  reflecting  men  can  readily 
conjecture.  We  do  not  with  malice  aforethought  indite  hard 
things  against  a  class  of  men  so  good,  able,  so  useful,  as  the 
American  clergy  are ;  nor  is  it  any  gratification.  But  we  feel 
that  they  need  to  be  sharply  spoken  to.  Their  habit  is  dic- 
tation, and  there  is  none  to  dictate  to  them.  WG  take  it 
upon  ourselves  to  guard  and  guide  the  shepherds.  We  would 
like  to  say  much  more  on  this  subject ;  but  long  articles  are 
neither  read  nor  copied,  and,  by  many,  a  long  cigar  or  a  long 
quid  of  tobacco  would  be  preferred.  For  the  present,  there- 
fore, we  content  ourselves  with  the  enunciation  of  the  gist  of 
this  article  :  —  students  and  professional  men  are  not  so  much 
injured  by  hard  study  as  by  hard  eating ;  nor  is  severe  study, 
for  a  lifetime,  of  itself  incompatible  with  mental  and  bodily 
vigor  to  the  full  age  of  threescore  years  and  ten. 


CIVILIZATION    AND    HEALTH. 

THE  past  history  of  nations  is  conclusive  as  to  one  point,  that 
prosperity  begets  refinement,  luxury,  disease,  and  ruin.  Is 
this  a  necessary  result?  Will  this  great  and  prosperous  coun- 
try, with  its  daily  developing  improvements,  tending  to  the  re- 
duction and  perfection  of  labor,  as  well  as  to  the  conveniences 
and  comforts  of  life,  eventually  fall  into  effeminacy  and  extinc- 
tion? We  utter  a  decisive  negative.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
civilization,  —  the  ignorant  and  the  educated.  Of  two  families, 
in  all  respects  equal,  having  at  their  command  every  modern 
convenience,  one  will  live  in  high  health,  and  in  the  steady 
enjoyment  of  the  blessings  of  life,  until  an  honorable  old  age  ; 
while  the  other  will  as  certainly  fade  away,  the  children  per- 
ishing first,  and  last  of  all  the  parents :  and  even  they,  long 


218  CIVILIZATION  AND  HEALTH. 

before  the  attainment  of  threescore  years  and  ten ;  their  very 
names  blotted  from  social  memory.  This  wide  difference  is 
the  direct  result  of  the  manner  of  life  of  the  respective  fam- 
ilies ;  one  having  lived  rationally,  having  lived  up  to  the  laws 
of  our  being,  the  other  having  wholly  neglected  them.  The 
latter,  dying  off  prematurely,  have  cut  off  the  race  of  effemi- 
nate imbeciles,  while  the  former  have  handed  down  to  society 
the  bequest  of  healthful  constitutions.  Thus  we  perceive 
that  educated  civilization  will  perpetuate  a  nationality,  while 
an  uneducated  one  destroys  it. 

But  in  the  fierce  race  which  the  masses  run  for  pleasure, 
wealth,  fame,  is  there  any  probability  of  inducing  any  great 
number  to  stop  a  while  in  their  course,  and  learn  something 
of  a  true  life?  There  are  a  few  such  in  all  communities  ;  and 
as  these  leave  seed,  while  the  others  leave  none,  the  inequality 
will  rapidly  diminish.  Thus  it  is  that  within  a  hundred  years 
the  average  of  human  life  has  increased  all  over  the  world ; 
but  more  largely  in  its  most  civilized  portions.  The  investi- 
gations and  teachings  of  the  true  laws  of  our  being  have  been 
confined  to  the  medical  profession ;  and  they  have  been  pur- 
sued with  a  diligence  and  a  self-denial  practised  by  no  class 
of  men  on  the  habitable  globe,  because,  for  the  most  part, 
these  investigations  have  been  made  under  circumstances  of 
animal  and  human  suffering,  of  squalor,  disgust,  and  horror 
often,  which,  to  any  other  than  a  trained  medical  mind,  would 
have  been  impossible  of  endurance. 

We  may  say,  with  great  truth,  that  the  material  glory,  per- 
manence, and  power  of  any  community  consists  in  the  physical 
vigor  of  the  individual  men  and  women  who  compose  it ;  for 
physical  perfection  gives  mental  energy  and  mental  health. 
An  exemplification  of  this  important  truth  is  found  in  the 
stability  of  everything  English,  and  the  evanescent  state  of 
everything  French.  We  believe  that  physical  perfection 
begets  mental  vigor,  and  that,  in  turn,  by  appropriate  tui- 
tions, begets  moral  power ;  and  that  this  combination  makes 
the  perfect  man. 

Many  persons  are  frightened  away  b}r  the  mere  mention  of 
living  up  to  the  laws  of  our  being,  and  at  once  begin  to  think 
of  something  painfully  abstruse  or  laboriously  indefinite.  An 
image  of  feeling  after  something  in  a  fog  at  once  arises  before 


CIVILIZATION  AND  HEALTH.  219 

their  mind ;  and  anon  come  spectres  of  self-denial,  starvation, 
physic,  and  pills,  ad  infinitum. 

In  all  investigations,  it  is  best  to  clear  away  the  rubbish 
first,  and  look  for  some  foundation  stones ;  to  ferret  out  some 
first  principles,  some  elementary  ideas,  which  must,  iu  the 
very  nature  of  things,  be  few  and  well  defined,  and  conse- 
quently as  facile  of  remembrance  as  they  are  practicable  in 
their  application. 

The  Holy  Scriptures,  with  beautiful  exactness,  declared, 
four  thousand  years  ago,  what  the  scientific  investigations  of 
subsequent  ages  have  steadily  confirmed,  that  the  blood  is  the 
life  of  all  animal  being.  It  is  the  blood  which  originates, 
governs,  and  completes  every  vital  power  in  the  whole 
machinery  of  man ;  consequently  perfect  health  is  only  to 
be  secured  by  maintaining  the  blood  in  its  natural  state. 
The  researches  of  the  lights  of  our  profession  have  estab- 
lished the  facts,  that  this  natural  state  of  the  blood  compre- 
hends a  fourfold  development :  — 

1.  The  organic  element,  or  chylid. 

2.  The  coloring  element,  or  hcematid. 

3.  The  animal  element,  or  lymphid. 

4.  The  fluid  element,  or  liquor  sanguinis. 

In  a  few  hours  after  food  is  eaten  it  is  converted  into  a 
whitish,  sweetish,  thickish  fluid,  whatever  may  be  the  nature 
of  the  food  ;  but  in  it  are  found  innumerable  little  globules 
which  are  called  chylids.  These  globules  consist  of  a  little 
bladder,  or  cell,  in  which  is  an  atom,  called  an  egg.  The 
cell  being  a  boat  floating  about  in  the  chyle,  the  atom  is  its 
freight,  which,  as  it  passes  along,  becomes  a  living  thing,  as 
an  egg  becomes  a  chick ;  but,  being  quickened  into  life,  it 
changes  into  a  reddish  color,  and  takes  another  name  in  its 
new  and  living  nature,  and  is  called  a  hc&matid.  This  won- 
derful change,  from  dead  food  to  living  existence,  owes  its 
origin  to  that  equal  Power  which  made  all  worlds.  These 
animalcular  hsematids  are  so  diminutive  that  a  small  box,  an 
inch  deep,  an  inch  broad,  and  an  inch  long,  will  hold  more 
than  a  hundred  thousand  millions  of  them.  These  hasmatids 
are  the  foundation  of  all  health  and  life.  If  they  are  trans- 
ported in  their  little  boats,  in  unimpaired  vigor,  to  the  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  body,  those  parts  grow  with  the  same  life 


220  CIVILIZATION  AND  HEALTH. 

and  health  which  these  haematids  have  ;  but  if  injured  in  their 
transmission  in  any  way,  the  part  of  the  body  to  which  they 
go  is  inevitably  injured  —  becomes  diseased.  Our  next  step, 
then,  is  to  inquire,  taking  it  for  granted  that  digestion  is 
good,  what  circumstances  in  practical  life  have  the  effect  to 
injure  these  new-born  voyagers? 

The  blood  of  a  vigorous  man,  on  the  instant  of  being  drawn, 
is  just  as  full  of  life  as  our  own  great  Broadway  on  any  sunny 
afternoon.  It  is  this  life  which  gives  the  blood  its  solidity, 
or,  more  properly,  its  thickness.  When  a  person  dies  from 
using  chloroform,  the  blood  is  as  liquid  almost  as  water ;  it 
does  not  coagulate,  become  thick  and  clotted,  as  the  blood 
does  from  natural  or  other  forms  of  death.  On  examining 
into  the  cause,  it  is  discovered  that  of  all  the  millions  of 
haematids  not  a  single  one  is  alive ;  for  the  little  cell-boat 
has  been  dissolved,  and  its  occupant  has  perished.  The 
poison  from  the  bite  of  venomous  snakes  has  the  same 
effect. 

It  is  found  also  that  when  a  person  dies  by  breathing  the 
fumes  of  charcoal,  or  breathing  carbonic  acid  gas  in  any  other 
form,  every  single  haematid  is  found  dead,  asphyxiated,  just 
as  the  subject  was.  If,  then,  breathing  carbonic  acid  gas 
kills  the  haematids,  they  carrying  none  of  their  life  to  the 
different  parts  of  the  body,  the  man  himself  just  as  certainly 
dies,  because  his  supply  of  life  is  cut  off;  and  if  for  any  single 
minute  this  living  freight  of  haematids  is  arrested,  that  minute 
we  die. 

A  little  reflection  here  will  suggest  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant principles  connected  with  human  health  —  that  is  to  say, 
out-door  air  has  no  carbonic  acid  gas  ;  hence  they  who  breathe 
it  always  revel  in  glorious  health. 

If,  again,  pure  carbonic  acid  gas  as  certainly  kills  a  man  in 
as  short  time  as  the  breathing  of  choloroform  or  the  poison 
of  an  adder,  by  killing  the  haematids,  so  any  air  breathed,  in 
proportion  as  it  is  impregnated  with  carbonic  acid  gas,  will 
do  violence  to  the  life  of  the  hasmatids.  But  a  man  in  sleep- 
ing, not  only  breathes  out  carbonic  acid  gas,  but  converts  the 
air,  in  a  close  room,  into  carbonic  acid  gas ;  and  the  smaller 
the  room  the  sooner  will  that  conversion  be  made,  and  the 
closer  the  room  the  more  perfect  will  be  that  conversion. 


CIVILIZATION  AND  HEALTH.  221 

It  will  be  thus  seen  that  it  is  an  utter  impossibility  for  any 
one  to  sleep,  for  a  single  night,  in  a  room  with  windows  and 
doors  closed,  without  inflicting  death,  at  its  birth,  to  that 
which  otherwise  would  have  given  to  the  body  vigor,  health, 
and  life.  And  although  the  mischief  is  not  made  apparent  by 
the  death  of  the  individual  next  morning,  that  mischief  is  not 
the  less  real,  although  it  is  less  extensive,  and  its  ill  results 
are  sooner  or  later  inevitable.  Within  a  year,  a  ship  was 
undergoing  an  examination  in  a  dry  dock ;  and  at  a  certain 
point  its  bottom,  for  a  few  inches  square,  was  found  to  be 
not.  thicker  than  a  piece  of  paper.  On  examination,  it  was 
ascertained  that  a  small  pebble  was  lodged  in  the  space  be- 
tween the  plank  which  faced  the  water  and  that  which  made 
the  inner  floor  of  the  vessel.  It  had  been  there  for  two  years, 
and  with  every  motion  of  that  vessel  on  its  billowy  home  that 
little  pebble  also  moved,  and  in  its  motion  wore  away  some 
of  the  timber.  Too  small,  it  may  be,  for  detection  by  any 
ordinarj'  microscope,  but  in  the  course  of  a  year  it  was  enough 
to  wear  away  an  inch  of  solid  timber,  and  in  the  second  year 
nearly  two  inches  more  ;  for  with  the  increase  of  room  which 
it  made  for  itself  there  was  an  increase  of  momentum,  and 
consequent  wear.  Because  the  captain  of  that  vessel  was 
ignorant  of  that  imprisoned  pebble,  and  because  he  saw  no 
indication  of  its  destructive  influences,  those  influences 
were  not  the  less  real,  and  not  the  less  certain  of  terrible 
disaster,  but  for  the  fortunate  discovery.  Thus  it  is  with 
human  life  and  health.  The  breathing  of  a  vitiated  atmos- 
phere, whether  in  close  and  small  rooms  or  large  and  close 
bedrooms,  or  in  family  rooms  over  cellars  without  ceilings, 
whose  noisome  odors  rise  incessantly  day  and  night  to  the 
upper  portions  of  the  buildings,  —  the  fumes  from  decayed 
vegetables,  barrels  and  boxes  sodden  with  dampness,  which 
have  not  seen  the  light  of  the  sun  for  years,  saying  nothing 
of  old  bones,  rags,  brooms,  and  various  other  things  for  which 
the  cellar  is  used  as  a  common  receptacle,  —  or  whether  these 
miasms  and  malarias  are  generated  in  dirty  back-yards,  or 
piles  of  sweepings  heaped  up  under  stairs  or  in  closets  or 
dark  corners,  or  from  livery  stables,  or  cow-houses,  or  pig- 
pens, or  butcher-stalls,  or  vegetable  markets, — we  repeat, 
the  breathing  of  such,  or  other  vitiated  atmospheres,  does, 


222  SLEEPLESSNESS. 

by  an  immutable  law  of  nature,  bring  injury  to  the  system 
with  the  same  certainty  that  gravity  will  affect  a  projected 
feather,  or  cannon-ball,  or  mountain. 

These  are  truths  which  every  person  should  know  for  him- 
self, and  should  teach  to  his  children  from  their  earliest  years  ; 
for  it  is  only  by  the  diffusion  and  practice  of  knowledge  like 
this  that  we  can  ever  hope  to  see  a  healthy  offspring,  and  to 
enjoy,  not  only  with  impunity,  but  with  advantage,  all  that 
is  meant  by  the  term  "modern  conveniences." 


SLEEPLESSNESS. 

SLEEPLESSNESS  is  the  result  of  over  bodily  or  mental  effort. 
When  a  man  works  beyond  his  strength,  or  thinks  or  studies 
more  than  rest  can  restore,  then,  sooner  or  later,  comes  that 
inability  to  sleep  soundty,  that  wakefulness,  which  is  more 
wearing  even  than  bodily  labor,  and  which  feeds  the  debility 
which  first  gave  rise  to  it.  The  result  is,  a  man  is  always 
tired,  never  feels  rested,  even  when  he  leaves  his  bed  in  the 
morning ;  hence  he  wastes  away,  and  finds  repose  only  in  the 
grave,  if  indeed  insanity  do  not  supervene.  It  is  too  often 
a  malady  remediless  by  medical  means.  Avoid,  then,  as  you 
would  a  viper  or  a  murderer,  all  over-effort  of  mind  and  body. 
It  is  suicidal.  Whatever  you  do,  get  enough  sleep  ;  whatever 
you  do,  take  enough  rest  to  restore  the  used  energies  of  each 
preceding  twenty-four  hours.  If  you  do  not,  you  may  escape 
for  a  few  months,  and,  if  possessing  a  good  constitution,  years 
may  pass  away  before  any  decided  ill  result  forces  itself  on 
your  attention ;  but  rest  assured  the  time  will  come  when  the 
too-often  baffled  system,  like  a  baffled  horse,  will  refuse  to 
work.  It  will  not  take  prompt  and  sound  sleep,  it  will  not 
be  rested  by  repose  ;  and  that  irritating  wakefulness  will  come 
upon  you  which  philosophy  cannot  conquer,  which  medicine 
cannot  cure,  and,  wasting  by  slow  degrees  to  skin  and  bone, 
rest  is  found  only  in  the  grave. 


INSANITY.  223 


INSANITY. 

A  GENTLEMAN  passing  along  the  streets  of  London,  not  long 
ago,  was  suddenly  accosted  by  an  entire  stranger.  "  Did 
you  ever  thank  God  that  you  had  never  lost  your  mind?" 
"Really,"  replied  the  gentleman,  as  soon  as  he  recovered 
from  the  surprise  which  the  circumstance  excited,  "I  cannot 
say  that  I  ever  did."  "  You  ought  to  ;  for  I  have  lost  mine," 
said  the  strange  interrogator,  as  he  passed  rapidly  on,  and 
was  soon, lost  in  the  living  tide  which  ceaselessly  flows  along 
the  Strand. 

To  be  a  drivelling  idiot,  to  be  hopelessly  insane,  to  be  feel- 
ing after  something  for  a  lifetime  and  never  mid  it,  to  be  for 
long  years  in  that  troubled  dream  which,  in  health,  before 
now,  —  although  it  was  but  for  a  moment  or  two,  —  has 
caused  us  to  awake,  drenched  in  an  agony  of  perspiration, 
or  found  us  trembling  like  an  aspen  —  and  yet,  reader,  that 
may  be  your  ending !  Under  such  circumstances  the  lamp  of 
lite  may  go  out  to  you ;  you  may  go  down  to  the  grave,  the 
universe  a  blank !  We  propose  telling  you  how  you  may 
avoid  it.  We  will  give  you  no  impossible  rule,  no  impracti- 
cable recipe,  difficult  of  remembrance ;  for  less  than  half  a 
dozen  words  will  tell  it  all  —  do?i't  dwell  on  one  idea. 

Without  the  rationale  of  this  you,  perhaps,  would  not  re- 
member it  twenty-four  hours ;  therefore,  in  order  to  impress 
it  on  the  memory,  and  save  you  from  so  terrible  a  fate  as  a 
mind  in  ruins,  we  will  give  here  the  pathology,  as  a  doctor 
would  say  —  nutritive  degradation;  or,  if  you  want  the  whole 
idea  in  a  single  word,  it  is  atrophy. 

Some  time  ago  we  "went  to  meeting,"  which,  modernized, 
is,  "attended  church,"  to  hear  one  of  the  most  scholastic 
divines  of  great  Gotham.  Among  other  magnificent  truths, 
the  speaker  declared,  "Anthropomorphism  is  theopneustic ! " 
There  he  left  us.  As  we  knew  Greek,  it  was  not  difficult 
of  remembrance.  It  took  us,  however,  a  good  while  to  dig 
out  the  diamond.,  But  we  took  it  in  good  part,  as  just  then 
we  remembered  one  of  our  own  definitions  of  "consumption," 
in  those  earlier  years  when  we  essayed  to  be  tremendously 


224  INSANITY. 

learned  —  Consumption  is  the  oxydation  of  the  exudation 
corpuscle.  That  is  a  fact,  to  be  sure ;  but  it  would  take  a 
"Philadelphia  lawyer"  to  elaborate  it;  and  we  cannot  say 
that  a  wondering  world  is  any  the  wiser  for  either  of  the 
grand  announcements. 

For  fear,  then,  that  nutritive  degradation  might  meet  the 
fate  of  all  the  Capulets,  we  will  abate  the  top-loftiness  of  the 
diction,  and  come  down  to  the  commons. 

The  brains  of  all  persons  dying  insane  are  withered,  as  it 
were,  in  some  portion  or  other,  in  the  sense  that  a  limb  or 
muscle  withers  when  unused  —  withered  in  a  far  greater 
degree  than  are  the  brains  of  those  who  do  npt  die  of 
insanity.  According  to  the  present  state  of  medical  knowl- 
edge, the  whole  mass  of  the  brain  of  a  person  dying  insane 
weighs  less  than  it  would  have  done  had  the  person  perished 
instantaneously,  in  health. 

Inactivity  is  destruction  throughout  the  universe  of  things. 
The  human  body  as  a  whole,  or  as  to  any  one  part,  is  no 
exception  to  that  boundless  law.  The  unused  arm  dwindles 
to  skin  and  bone  ;  the  unused  lungs  soon  weaken,  then  rot 
away.  The  brain  comes  within  the  universal  law  of  our 
physical  being,  and,  if  unused,  perishes  before  its  prime, 
either  in  whole  or  part. 

But  now  we  come  to  the  great  phrenological  fact,  which 
only  prejudice  denies,  that  the  brain  is  not  a  unit,  but  is 
made  up  of  compartments,  each  of  which  is  the  fountain  from 
which  springs  the  sense,  or  feeling,  or  sentiment,  peculiar  to 
it.  All  men  practically  believe  this  essentially,  whatever 
may  be  their  expressed  opinions. 

The  compartments  of  the  brain  in  the  skull  may  be  appro- 
priately compared  to  an  extensive  and  well-conducted  manu- 
factory, with  its  numberless  rooms,  in  each  of  which  some 
one  portion  of  a  great  machine  is  made.  In  one  part  of  our 
brain,  we  may  say,  our  mirth  is  manufactured  ;  in  another 
our  vanity,  in  another  our  pride,  and  so  on ;  and  that  brain 
is  in  its  healthiest  state,  is  the  best  balanced,  in  which  every 
room  has  its  proper  work,  well,  fully,  and  industriously  done. 
But  if  one  part  is  worked  too  much,  mischief  is  the  result ;  or 
if  one  part  works  too  little,  disorder  is  inevitable.  If  too 
much  mirth  is  made,  the  expression  leaps  from  our  lips, 


INSANITY.  225 

"  He  is  as  funny  as  a  fool ; "  and  we  bestow  a  less  compli- 
mentary epithet  on  one  who  fails  to  exercise  his  observant 
faculties,  likening  him  to  the  animal  which  was  exactly  like 
a  mule —  only  more  so. 

It  is  the  full,  steady \  equable  exercise  of  every  mental  fac- 
ulty which  is  the  only  infallible  guarantee  against  fatuity. 

Let  every  man  and  woman  mature  this  idea  well,  and 
steadily  guard  against  one  thought,  one,  pursuit,  one  exclu- 
sive employment,  one  hate,  one  love,  one  grief.  Blessed  is 
that  Providence  which  seldom  sends  a  single  trouble  I  It 
is  Fatherly  beneficence  which  often  orders  another,  to  tear 
the  heart  away  from  dwelling  on  the  one  great  calamity.  It 
is  single  troubles  which  craze  men.  It  is  not  the  general 
student  whose  mind  becomes  unbalanced.  It  is  not  the  man 
who  has  a  great  many  irons  in  the  fire  at  a  time  ;  it  is  not  the 
worker  who  has  more  business  than  he  can  attend  to  :  it  is 
the  man  who  has  leisure  to  do  nothing,  it  is  the  man  who 
nurses  the  one  thought  wholly,  who  makes  shipwreck  of  the 
immortal  part.  It  is  the  one-idea  man  who  is  without  ballast, 
and  we  patronizingly  excuse  him  by  saying,  "On  every  other 
subject  he  is  a  sensible  person." 

Asylum  statistics  force  upon  us  the  unexpected  truth,  that 
of  all  classes  of  inmates  farmers  make  the  largest,  in  spite  of 
the  fabulous  health-giving  influences  of  a  farming  life.  Such 
a  result  can  in  no  way  be  accounted  for,  except  in  the  same- 
ness of  thought  and  pursuit.  Another  fact,  quite  unantici- 
pated, is,  that  in  an  equal  number  of  New  England  men,  and 
slaves  on  Southern  plantations,  the  proportion  of  lunatics  is 
five  times  greater  among  the  whites  :  there  are  five  lunatics, 
to  one  among  the  negroes.  It  is  because  steady  concentra- 
tion in  a  limited  sphere  is  essential  to  securing  plenty  from 
the  stony  soil  of  New  England  —  so  barren  indeed  that  multi- 
tudes are  driven  from  agricultural  pursuits,  and  in  patents 
and  inventions  eat  out  their  minds. 

Our  farmer  readers  will  very  naturalty  inquire  what  we 
would  advise  as  the  most  perfect  safeguard  against  so  lamen- 
table a  close  of  life.  Unhesitatingly  we  respond,  Scientific 
agriculture ;  for  there  is  not  a  quality  of  the  mind  which  in 
its  far-reachings  it  will  not  wake  up  and  energize  :  for,  to  be 
properly  and  most  profitably  pursued,  it  makes  almost  every 


226  A  PRESENTIMENT. 

other  science  subservient  to  it.  Thus  followed,  it  is  the  most 
ennobling  of  all  human  pursuits,  because  it  perfects  the  body 
and  refines  and  elevates  the  mind. 

What  we  have  said,  therefore,  at  the  commencement  of  this 
article,  we  desire  to  repeat  at  its  conclusion,  with  most  im- 
pressive emphasis  —  DON'T  DWELL  ON  ONE  IDEA. 


A    PRESENTIMENT. 

A  PRESENTIMENT  is  an  impression  on  the  mind  that  some- 
thing is  going  to  take  place  —  and  usually  such  is  the  case. 
Perhaps  we  may  say,  without  exaggeration,  that  something 
always  does  occur  after  a  presentiment  is  formed.  If  such 
were  not  the  fact,  we  cannot  conjecture  what  would  become 
of  everybody.  Just  imagine,  for  a  moment,  that  something 
did  not  take  place  in  such  a  large  world  as  this  ! 

Presentiments  love  weak  places  ;  hence  they  flourish  among 
weak-minded  people  —  not  necessarily  weak-minded  by  na- 
ture, but  made  so  by  a  diseased  body.  We  are  told  of  a 
young  lady  at  Kinderhook,  who  was  visited  by  an  apparition, 
two  years  ago,  at  dead  hour  of  night,  which  announced  to 
her,  in  solemn  accents,  that  in  two  years  she  would  be  the 
inhabitant  of  another  and  a  better  world.  This  circumstance 
had  such  a  depressing  influence  on  her  mind  that  she  pined 
away  by  degrees,  and  did  die  at  the  close  of  the  term  named, 
and  was  buried  a  few  days  ago. 

An  eminent  clergyman,  on  parting  from  another  in  St. 
Louis,  said,  "  I  have  a  strong  presentiment  that  we  shall 
never  meet  again ;  "  and  within  a  few  hours  he  perished  at 
the  gasconade  on  the  Pacific  Railway. 

An  almost  infallible  cure  for  presentiment,  however  violent, 
is  a  good  emetic,  a  grubbing  hoe,  with  a  few  days'  bread  and 
water  diet.  For  ourselves  we  would  omit  the  emetic,  as  we 
do  not  patronize  physic,  except  by  proxy.  The  reason  we 
give  medicine  at  all  is,  that  people  are  always  in  a  hurry  — 
not  exactly  to  get  well,  but  to  get  able  to  cat.  If  they  can 
only  eat,  nine  out  of  ten  think  they  are  getting  along  famously. 
Everybody  wants  to  get  well  in  a  minute  ;  and  for  the  bare 


A   PRESENTIMENT.  227 

chances  of  doing  so,  with  a  slight  degree  of  assurance  to  that 
effect  from  any  knave  who  is  willing  to  promise,  it  having 
the  wit  to  see  at  a  glance  that  the  assurance  must  be  father 
to  the  fee,  —  we  repeat,  with  a  very  slim  assurance  of  being 
made  well  in  a  short  time,  the  large  majority  of  invalids 
would  swallow  a  quart  of  Shakespeare's  soup  thrice  a  day, 
said  soup  being  made,  as  the  reader  may  remember,  by  sev- 
eral old  witches,  of  such  things  as  newt's  eyes,  frog's  toes, 
lizard- wings,  stings  of  rattlesnakes,  and  other  ingredients 
not  necessary  to  be  named,  but  all  brought  to  the  climatic 
point  by  —  onions. 

An  emetic  will  dissipate  a  presentiment  in  five  minutes, 
while  the  vigorous  use  of  the  grubbing-hoe  in  the  open  air 
would  work  off  the  extra  and  thick  blood,  —  accumulation 
in  the  brain  generates  these  diseased  imaginings,  —  while 
the  diet  of  bread  and  water  would  supply  a  pure  article  of 
blood  in  the  place  of  the  impure  material. 

Who  ever  heard  of  a  healthy,  out-door  day  laborer  having 
a  "  presentiment "  in  the  pursuit  of  his  occupation  ?  The  fact 
is,  they  have  not  time  to  be  moping  about  such  tomfooleries ; 
the  only  presentiment  that  ever  troubles  them  is  a  veritable 
fact,  a  tangible  reality. 

Presentiments  do  not  exist  except  in  connection  with  one 
of  the  three  following  things  :  1.  A  weak  mind.  2.  A  dis- 
eased body.  3.  An  idle  condition  of  life. 

Loafing  and  gluttony  are  the  great  originators  of  this  unfor- 
tunate condition  of  mind  ;  and  its  almost  certain  removal  fol- 
lows temperate  eating,  combined  with  physical  activity.  If 
unattended  to,  and  friendly  death  does  not  step  in  to  save 
from  a  greater  calamity,  insanity  winds  up  the  history. 

To  the  reflecting  we  suggest  a  fact  which  dissipates  the 
mystery  which  hangs  around  presentiments.  In  ordinary 
cases  a  thing  is  not  baptized  as  a  "  presentiment "  until  the 
coincidence  of  the  fact.  Superstitious  minds,  iu  which  pre- 
sentiments mostly  dwell,  take  no  note  of  the  countless  impres- 
sions that  certain  things  might  take  place,  which  did  not 
afterwards  take  place.  One  such  coincidence  makes  an  im- 
pression against  a  million  non-concurrents. 


228  POLITICS   AND  PHYSIC. 


POLITICS  AND  PHYSIC. 

IT  is  a  very  difficult  matter  to  prevent  a  politician  from 
becoming  a  drunkard ;  and  very  few  there  are  who  can  run 
the  dangerous  gantlet  without  becoming  lovers  of  liquor,  at 
least  to  the  extent  of  an  occasional  glass.  The  large  number 
of  distinguished  political  names  which  have  passed  down  into 
a  drunkard's  grave,  within  the  last  twenty-five  years,  will 
appall  any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  make  the  enu- 
meration ;  and  still  more  appalling  would  be  the  array  of 
splendid  minds,  splendid  in  promise,  whose  glory  has  gone 
prematurely  out,  drowned  in  the  wine-cup  ! 

But  the  idea  to  which  we  wish  to  draw  parental  attention, 
in  this  article,  is  not  to  professed  politicians,  but  to  that 
numerous  class  of  young  men  who  depend  on  political  party 
for  a  living.  In  a  large  number  of  cases,  their  destination 
is  one  of  three  :  — 

1.  Premature  death. 

2.  Brandy  drinking. 

3.  A  blank  life. 

It  is  well  known  that  most  governmental  employees  hold 
their  position  by  reason  of  their  political  opinions ;  conse- 
quently every  change  of  policy  throws  them  out  of  em- 
ployment. Those  who  are  not  dismissed  by  an  incoming 
administration  are  such  as  have  rendered  their  services  neces- 
sary to  the  government,  by  their  self-sacrificing  assiduity  in 
the  faithful  discharge  of  their  duties.  If  this  were  all,  it 
might  be  borne;  but,  as  might  be  expected,  a  mere  partisan 
office-holder  neglects  his  duties,  and  the  performance  of  them 
falls  on  those  who  are  more  faithful  to  their  trusts ;  and  in 
this  double  work  numbers  perish  prematurely,  by  diseases 
engendered  through  over-labor  and  over-solicitude. 

But  nine  out  of  ten  of  those  who  hold  political  places, 
change  with  the  administration ;  and  being  thrown  out  of 
office,  have  no  other  means  of  livelihood.  With  perhaps  a 
wife  and  a  child  or  two  to  be  provided  for,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  perceive  the  weighty  inducements  such  have  to  labor  for 
another  turn  of  the  political  wheel;  and,  in  performing  that 


POLITICS  AND  PHYSIC.  229 

labor,  they  fall  into  such  practices  and  associations  as  make 
an  escape  from  drunkenness  an  exception  rather  than  the 
rule. 

But  in  the  few  cases  where  the  love  of  liquor  is  not  a  result, 
—  where  there  is  too  much  moral  rectitude  to  go  down  to  that 
degradation,  —  the  want  of  employment  soon  brings  want  of 
subsistence ;  then  come  despondency,  idle  habits,  want  of 
energy,  and  in  its  train  want  of  ambition,  and  finally  loss 
of  self-respect,  and  a  "blank  life." 

In  view  of  these  things,  we  consider  it  a  great  calamity  for 
a  young  man  to  obtain  any  salaried  political  office  ;  better  a 
great  deal,  because  safer  and  immeasurably  more  indepen- 
dent, to  serve  a  regular  apprenticeship  to  some  useful  handi- 
craft ;  for  then,  however  bright  may  be  the  fortunes  of  after 
life,  there  will  be  in  reserve,  in  case  of  reverses,  a  capital  to 
draw  upon  which  misfortune  cannot  sink,  which  governmental 
changes  cannot  destroy. 

We  feel  safe  in  going  still  further,  and  recommend  to  every 
parent  who  reads  this  work  to  sedulously  avoid  placing  a  child 
in  any  fixed  salaried  position  ;  for  such  a  position  will  engen- 
f  der  habits  of  idleness,  of  inattention,  of  want  of  thoroughness, 
which  will  be  an  effectual  barrier  against  success  in  life.  A 
young  man  with  a  fixed  salary  soon  begins  to  reason  thus : 
"I  will  get  so  much  anyhow,  even  if  I  am  not  quite  so  par- 
ticular ; "  and  that  is  the  first  step  towards  doing  things 
slightingly ;  and  when  such  a  disposition  takes  possession 
of  any  youth,  he  is  virtually  lost  to  society :  for  such  a  person 
will  never  obtain  an  enviable  preeminence.  Nor  is  this  all. 
A  fixed  salary  presents  a  direct  bribe  to  laziness  :  it  discour- 
ages activity  and  enterprise  ;  for  as  to  the  odds  and  ends  of 
time  which  necessarily  fall  to  persons  employed  to  do  busi- 
ness, the  young  man  reasons  thus :  "  If  I  do  more  than  is 
required  of  me,  if  I  work  ever  so  hard,  I  get  no  more  for 
it."  Hence  the  time  which  now  and  then  falls  on  his  hands 
is  frittered  away  in  some  unremunerative  manner,  if  indeed 
it  is  not  spent  in  ways  which  ultimately  end  in  a  snare. 

The  point  which  we  wish  most  to  impress  on  parents  is 
this  :  If  you  place  your  child  in  any  salaried  position  ;  if  you 
wish  to  encourage  him,  to  stimulate  his  ambition ;  if  you  wish 
to  encourage  a  feeling  of  self-appreciation  and  self-reliance, 


200  CLEE1CAL  MORTUARY. 

which  arc  absolutely  essential  to  high  success  in  any  depart- 
ment of  human  life,  place  your  children  in  positions  which 
will  moderately  remunerate  them,  in  proportion  to  their  in- 
dustry. We  say  "  moderately  remunerate ;"  for  we  believe 
that  greatly  disproportioned  remuneration  has  dangerous 
and  ruinous  tendencies,  in  more  ways  than  one ;  for  it 
engenders  a  taste  for  "  short  cuts "  to  wealth ;  and  that  be- 
gets, necessarily,  hazards,  wasting  anxieties,  and  desperate 
"throws;"  then  comes  unscrupulousness,  loss  of  principle, 
and  with  it  loss  of  all  that  is  dear  to  a  business  man.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  young  persons  are  schooled  to  expect  but 
moderate  remuneration  for  their  labor,  that  begets  moderate 
desires,  moderate  ambitions,  moderate  expectations,  —  and 
such  only  are  the  safe  citizens  in  any  community. 

In  conclusion,  we  desire  to  say,  if  a  parent  could  only  see 
one  sight  in  a  hundred,  of  what  any  eminent  city  physician 
witnesses,  of  the  foul  and  festering  disease,  of  the  bloated 
brutality,  which  riots  in  the  young  whom  idleness  or  want 
of  employment  has  ruined,  they  would  feel  relief  in  laying 
their  children  in  an  early  grave,  rather  than  see  them  placed 
in  offices,  however  honorable  and  remunerative,  the  loss  of 
which  is  so  often  attended  with  results  already  described. 

We  cannot  but  consider  the  general  tendency,  becoming 
still  more  common,  to  bring  up  children  without  mechanical 
employments,  and  without  regular  and  thorough  agricultural 
training,  as  one  of  the  serious  mistakes  of  the  times ;  for  not 
only  must  we  become  effeminate  without  labor,  but  that 
effeminacy  is  perpetuated  in  the  offspring,  while  all  of  us 
must  acknowledge  that  the  hardy  artificer  and  the  sturdy 
farmer  arc  the  main  elements  of  national  thrift  and  national 
perpetuity. 


CLERICAL  MORTUARY. 

OF  clergymen  of  all  denominations,  dying  during  1855,  in 
the  United  States,  there  were  one  hundred  and  twenty.  The 
smallest  number,  five,  died  in  February  ;  the  largest  number, 
seventeen,  died  in  October.  The  three  most  healthful  consecu- 


CLERICAL  MORTUARY.  231 

live  months,  were  December,  January,  and  February,  giving 
twenty-two  deaths,  or  about  one  fifth  of  the  whole ;  the  three 
most  fatal  consecutive  months  were  September,  October,  and 
November,  giving  thirty-nine  deaths,  or  one  third  of  the  whole  ; 
showing  the  error  of  the  prevalent  opinion,  that  "  bad  weather," 
as  it  is  called,  is  unhealthy,  necessarily ;  for,  during  the  most 
inclement  months  of  the  year,  the  smallest  number  died ;  while 
during  the  three  fall  months,  when  the  weather  is  neither  too 
cool  nor  too  hot,  the  mortality  is  nearly  double.  Railroad  con- 
ductors, who  are  in  and  out  of  suffocating  cars  incessantly 
during  the  coldest  months  of  the  year,  are  observably  healthy 
men.  The  men  of  the  Arctic  expeditions  do  not  die  of  bad 
colds,  pleurisies,  and  the  like.  Persons  often  make  the 
inquiry,  when  in  a  decline,  "  Will  it  hurt  me  to  go  out  of 
doors?  "  Our  almost  universal  reply  is,  "  No  !  it  will  do  you 
good.  Go  out,  rain  or  shine  ;  if  it  is  raining,  have  an  umbrella, 
and  let  it  rain  on."  How  is  it?  Part  of  the  lungs  are  gone, 
or  at  least  they  are  working  imperfectly,  consequently  such 
person  is  living  on  a  less  amount  of  air  than  the  system 
requires  ;  hence,  the  air  he  does  consume  should  be  the  purest 
possible ;  and  as  no  air  within  any  four  walls  can  be  pure,  the 
air  of  out-doors,  during  daylight,  must  be  the  most  proper  for 
all,  especially  for  consumptives,  the  world  over.  It  is  the 
irrational  dread  of  taking  cold,  by  going  out  of  doors,  which 
kills  nine  consumptives  out  of  ten  far  sooner  than  the  disease 
itself  wrould  have  done.  If  any  man,  sick  or  well,  wants  an 
infallible  receipt  for  getting  into  that  unfortunate  condition  in 
which  "  the  slightest  thing  in  the  world  gives  him  a  cold,"  let 
him  hover  around  the  fire  all  day,  let  him  bundle  up,  head 
and  ears,  every  time  he  puts  his  head  out  at  a  door  or  window, 
and  besides,  keep  his  room  regulated  to  a  degree,  for  mouths 
at  a  time.  Such  a  person  never  can  get  wrell  of  anything ; 
such  a  person,  with  such  habits  persevered  in,  will  die  long 
before  his  time,  it  matters  not  what  may  be  his  ailment. 
Under  "  the  sunny  skies  of  Italy,"  where,  according  to  poetic 
account,  it  is  a  happiness  to  breathe,  so  balmy  is  its  at- 
mosphere, the  average  of  human  life  is  shorter  than  in  any 
other  civilized  country.  Do  not  fear,  then,  the  bleak  December 
or  the  fiercer  January,  unless  quite  an  invalid,  or  very  old ; 


232  CLERICAL  MORTUARY. 

the  (irst  consideration  with  the  infant  of  one  year,  or  seventy- 
live,  is  u'armth,  warmth,  WARMTH. 

There  is,  however,  one  condition  of  the  weather  which  all, 
except  those  in  good  health,  should  endeavor  to  avoid.  An 
east  wind  is  fraught  with  danger  and  calamity  now,  as  it  was 
in  the  days  of  Scripture  history.  Such  winds  prevail  after 
rains  in  this  country,  and  there  is  a  rawness  and  a  dampness 
about  them  which  urgently  calls  for  shelter  for  man  and 
beast,  even  in  midsummer.  None,  not  even  the  healthy,  can 
be  exposed  to  east  or  north-east  winds  in  the  United  States, 
at  least,  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  with  impunity,  except 
under  one  condition,  and  that  is,  under  circumstances  of 
bodily  activity  sufficient  to  keep  off  all  feeling  of  chilliness ; 
and  when  such  activity  ceases,  immediate  retirement  to  a 
closed  room,  if  indeed  not  to  a  good  fire,  even  if  in  summer 
time,  for  it  is  in  summer  time  the  most  consumptive  colds 
originate. 

Of  the  one  hundred  and  twenty  clergymen  dying  during  1855, 
two  thirds,  eighty,  have  their  ages  recorded,  the  youngest 
twenty-seven,  the  oldest  ninety-four ;  of  these  eighty,  one  half 
had  passed  threescore  and  ten ;  thus  confirming  the  generally 
received  opinion  of  statisticians,  that  theologiaus  are  the  long- 
est lived  of  all  the  members  of  the  human  family,  the  reasons 
for  which,  we  believe,  are  mainly  these  :  — 

1.  Being  poorly  supported,  they  have  to  "rough  it;  "  the 
luxuries  of  life  are  impossible  to  them. 

2.  The  largest  portion  of  their  time,  as  a  class,  is  spent 
on   horseback,  or   other   modes  of  travel,    thus  securing   a 
large  consumption  of  out-door  air,  with  the  very  great  ad- 
vantage of  frequent  changes  of  air,  food,  and  mode  of  prep- 
aration. 

3.  Pleasurable  associations.    The  contemplations  of  a  minis- 
ter are  of  a  soothing  character ;  his  is  a  mission  of  love,  of 
pure    benevolence,  the   exercise   of  which   must   always   be 
bappifying. 

Not  only  so ;  the  clergymen  of  this  country,  and  we  feel 
thankful  that  it  is  so,  are  everywhere  received  with  a  respect- 
ful, cordial,  and  affectionate  welcome.  What  house  is  there  in 
this  whole  laud,  outside  of  cities,  where  every  thing  is  upside 
down,  wrong  end  foremost,  antipodean,  except  in  material 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  233 

benevolences,  —  where,  we  say,  can  a  family  be  found,  which 
has  not  at  least  one  Martha  to  be  careful  of  the  minister's 
comfort,  that  he  have  the  best  of  everything ;  and  in  return 
for  these  attentions,  aside  from  duty  and  natural  solicitude  for 
their  spiritual  welfare,  there  runs  out  from  the  minister's  heart 
towards  those  with  whom  he  is  brought  in  contact,  a  living 
stream  of  tender  concern,  which,  in  its  reflex  influences,  gives 
warmth  and  health  to  soul  and  body ;  thus  verifying  the 
promise,  that  those  who  love  and  serve  God  best,  not  only 
have  the  life  that  now  is,  but  that  which  is  to  come.  Having 
secured  religion,  all  other  necessary  things  are  thrown  in. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

IT  is  not  true  that  sugar  and  candies  are  of  themselves  inju- 
rious to  the  teeth,  or  the  health  of  those  who  use  them  ;  so  far 
from  it,  they  are  less  injurious  than  any  of  the  ordinary  forms 
of  food,  when  employed  in  moderation. 

Any  scientific  dentist  will  tell  you,  that  the  parts  of  teeth 
most  liable  to  decay  are  those  which  afford  lodgment  to  par- 
ticles of  food ;  such  particles,  being  decomposed  by  moisture 
and  heat,  give  out  an  acid  which  will  corrode  steel  as  well  as 
teeth  ;  but  pure  sugar  and  pure  candies  are  wholly  dissolved  ; 
there  is  no  remnant  to  be  decomposed  to  yield  this  destruc- 
tive acid ;  we  remember  now  no  item  of  food  which  is  so  per- 
fectly dissolved  in  the  mouth  as  sugar  and  candy.  When 
visiting  the  sugar  plantations  of  Cuba,  the  attention  was  con- 
stantly arrested  by  the  apparently  white  and  solid  teeth  of 
the  negroes  who  superintended  the  process  of  cane-grinding ; 
they  drank  the  cane-juice  like  water,  there  was  no  restraint  as 
to  its  use,  and  the  little  urchins  playing  about  would  chew 
the  sugar-yielding  cane  by  the  hour.  It  is  much  the  same  in 
Louisiana,  where  the  shining  faces  and  broad  grins  of  the 
blacks  are  equally  indicative  of  exuberant  health  and  "  splendid 
teeth." 

How  does  it  happen,  then,  that  there  should  be  "the  prev- 
alent belief"  that  sugar  and  sugar-candy  destroy  the  teeth 
and  undermine  the  health?  Perhaps  the  most  correct  reply 


234  POPULAR  FALLICIES. 

is,  Tradition,  the  father  of  a  progeny  of  errors  in  theory 
and  practice  ;  of  errors  in  doctrine  and  example,  "  too  tedious 
to  mention." 

One  of  the  common  faults  of  the  times  is  an  indisposition 
to  investigate  on  the  part  of  the  masses.  We  take  too  much 
for  granted.  A  very  common  answer  to  a  demand  for  a 
reason  for  a  time-honored  custom  is,  "  Why,  I  have  heard  it 
all  my  life.  Don't  everybody  say  so?" 

It  would  be  a  strange  contradiction  in  the  nature  of  things, 
if  sugar  and  candy,  in  moderation,  should  be  hurtful  to  the 
human  body  in  any  way,  for  sugar  is  a  constituent  of  every 
article  of  food  we  can  name ;  there  is  not  a  vegetable  out  of 
which  it  cannot  be  made,  not  a  ripe  fruit  in  our  orchards 
which  does  not  yield  it  in  large  proportions,  and  it  is  the 
main  constituent  of  that  "milk"  which  is  provided  for  the 
young  of  animals  and  men  all  over  the  world.  Perhaps  the 
child  has  never  lived  which  did  not  love  sweet  things  beyond 
all  others ;  it  is  an  instinct,  a  passion  not  less  universal  than 
the  love  of  water.  A  very  little  child  can  be  hired  to  do  for 
a  bit  of  sugar  what  it  will  do  willingly  for  nothing  else.  The 
reason  of  this  is,  that  without  sugar  no  child  could  possibly 
live  —  it  would  freeze  to  death;  it  is  the  sugar  in  its  food 
which  keeps  it  warm,  and  warmth  is  the  first  necessity  for  a 
child. 

But  to  use  this  information  intelligently  and  profitably, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  sugar  is  an  artificial  product, 
is  a  concentration,  and  that,  if  used  in  much  larger  pro- 
portions than  would  be  found  in  our  ordinary  food,  as  pro- 
vided by  the  beneficent  FATHER  of  us  all,  we  will  suf- 
fer injury.  We  should  never  forget  that  the  immoderate 
use  of  anything  is  destructive  to  human  health  and  life,  if 
persevered  in.  The  best  general  rules  to  be  observed  are 
two  :  — 

1.  Use  concentrated  sweets  at  meal-times  only. 

2.  Use  them  occasionally,  and  in  moderation. 


BATH  ROOMS.  235 


BATH  ROOMS. 

LET  us  for  a  moment  lay  aside  all  book  and  newspaper 
knowledge,  all  preconceived  notions,  and  consult  our  feelings 
in  the  operation  of  that  kind  of  bathing  whose  object  is  to 
make  the  body  clean  of  the  grease,  scales,  dust,  &c.,  which 
are  constantly  accumulating  on  its  surface. 

We  all  know  that  cold  water  will  not  make  the  hands  clean , 
nor  will  hard  water,  even  if  it  is  warm.  Hence,  when  we 
wish  to  wash  ourselves  very  clean,  we  use  warm  water  with 
soap,  and  if  we  can  get  it,  rain,  or  cistern,  or  snow  water. 

With  the  present  habits  of  civilized  life,  comparatively  few 
persons  among  the  middle  and  upper  classes  of  society  have 
vitality  enough  to  make  a  cold  bath  advisable ;  they  have  not 
that  "  reaction  "  which  gives  to  a  cold  bath  its  highest  advan- 
tage, hence  even  the  most  rabid  cold-waterist  does  not  advise 
cold  baths  under  such  circumstances.  Then,  when  we  take 
into  account  how  many  children  there  are  who  are  too  young 
for  a  cold  bath,  that  old  have  not  the  stamina  for  it,  whilst  to 
that  large  number,  neither  infants,  nor  aged,  nor  young  peo- 
ple, but  "  children,"  who  roll  about  in  the  dust  and  mud  and 
snow,  who  sprawl  upon  the  floor  and  dabble  in  water  and  dirt, 
the  bathing  which  is  most  needed  is  a  cleansing  operation ; 
nothing  short  of  soap,  warm  water,  and  a  bristle  brush  will 
meet  their  demands,  so  that,  after  all,  especially  in  winter 
time,  by  nine  persons  out  of  ten  in  the  whole  community  of 
those  who  practise  bathing,  the  tepid  or  warm  bath  is  what  is 
needed.  In  fact,  only  the  very  small  class  of  persons  who 
are  robust  can  stand  a  cold  bath  in  winter,  and  in  our  opin- 
ion such  persons  do  not  need  it.  If  you  are  well,  let  your- 
self alone,  as  to  remedial  means,  for  you  can't  be  better  than 
well.  Personally,  this  is  our  theory,  and  practice  too ;  we 
never  had  a  cold  bath  but  once  since  boyhood,  and  that  made 
us  sick,  and  we  shudder  at  the  thought  of  a  cold  bath  ever 
since.  We  believe  cold  shower-baths  are  the  ordinary  pun- 
ishments inflicted  on  refractory  convicts  in  our  penitentiaries  ; 
we  have  understood  that  they  regard  them  with  the  greatest 
dread,  and  yet  there  are  wiseacres  among  us  who  daily  sub- 


236  BATH  BOOMS. 

init  themselves  to  that  self-infliction.  Such  persons  have 
expatiated  in  eloquent  terms  as  to  the  delightful  feelings  ex- 
perienced after  the  operation  is  over  of  a  morning.  As  for 
that  matter,  we  feel  delightful  of  a  morning  without  all  that 
trouble  and  penance.  The  perusal  of  the  morning  papers 
before  a  bright  coal  fire  in  the  grate  makes  us  feel  delightful ; 
and  more  delightful  still,  hearing  now  and  then,  the  mean- 
while, the  rapid  patting  of  the  little  feet  of  our  children  on 
the  floor  above  us,  as  they  get  out  of  bed  and  run  to  the  fire, 
being  the  first  telegraphic  message  to  us  in  the  morning  that 
they  have  waked  up  well,  merry,  and  happy.  This  is  a  feel- 
ing more  purely  delightful  than  any  cold  shower-bath  can 
originate,  without  the  preceding  "  shock,"  which  we  always 
think  of  with  a  shudder.  So  our  advice  is,  if  you  want  to 
feel  "  delightful "  of  a  winter's  morning,  have  a  young  dozen 
of  little  children  about  the  house,  — your  own,  mind,  — take 
one  or  two  morning  papers,  and  pay  for  them  in  advance  ( for 
there's  a  singular  virtue  in  that) ,  get  up,  dress  for  the  day,  and 
be  seated  before  a  brisk,  burning  fire  by  the  time  it  is  fairly  light 
enough  to  read  ;  be  sure,  though,  to  have  no  "bills payable  '  that 
day,  for  that  will  spoil  all  the  fun.  There's  nothing  "  delight- 
ful "  under  such  circumstances  when  there  are  no  assets  to 
draw  upon. 

But  we  have  unconsciously  wandered  from  the  bath-room 
to  Wall  Street.  Surely  we  are  getting  worldly-minded. 
Wonder  if  our  readers  have  been  led  to  surmise  the  same 
thing  ?  Ah,  me,  we  find  ourselves,  and  most  unwillingly,  arriv- 
ing at  the  experience  of  Lord  Byron,  when  he  declared  that 
he  had  come  to  the  point  of  his  life  in  which  he  began  to  feel 
the  highest  possible  respect  for  the  smallest  amount  of  cur- 
rent coin,  and  we  find  within  us  a  growing,  loving  attraction 
towards  the  avocations  which,  as  Jonathan  would  say,  "  pay 
best !  "  Our  experience  and  observation  convince  us  that 
nine  men  out  of  ten  will  pay,  in  experiments  for  regaining 
health,  a  thousand  dollars,  more  cheerfully  than  they  would 
pay  one  for  information  which,  if  acted  upon,  would  certainly 
preserve  it ;  and  fortunate  it  is  for  us  doctors  that  the  masses 
are  such  numskulls,  else  we  would  find  our  occupation  gone, 
and  would  have  to  go  to  cracking  rocks  for  the  turnpike,  or 
picking  oakum. 


TRUE   COUBAQE.  237 

When  we  sat  down,  we  intended  to  tell  on  one  side  of  a 
half  sheet  how  a  bath  room  ought  to  be  constructed,  but  our 
mind  is  forever  calculating  how  much  money  this  six  inches 
of  snow,  on  the  morning  of  the  nineteenth  day  of  March, 
Anno  Domini  eighteen  hundred  and  sixty-nine,  with  zero,  just 
ten  days  ago,  will  bring  us  ;  hope  it  will  be  "  considerable," 
anyhow.  Now  for  the  bath  room,  desperately. 

As  nine  tenths,  if  not  its  whole  use  in  winter,  at  least  in 
the  majority  of  families,  is  for  cleansing  purposes,  the  water 
should  be  warm,  but  if  the  body  emerges  from  the  water  into 
an  atmosphere  much  colder,  we  all  know  the  uncomfortable- 
ness  of  the  feeling  which  follows ;  this  causes  us  to  perform 
the  operation  hurriedly,  and  consequently  slightingly,  while 
to  a  great  many  the  more  serious  result  is  a  severe  cold,  caus- 
ing days  and  weeks,  if  not  months,  of  subsequent  discomfort 
or  illness.  The  water,  then,  in  the  bath  room  should  feel 
comfortably  warm,  while  the  air  of  the  room  should  be  of 
such  a  temperature  as  to  prevent  any  sensation  of  coldness 
amounting  to  the  disagreeable.  It  is  safer  to  be  guided  by 
one's  feelings  as  to  the  temperature  of  the  water  and  the  air 
of  the  room  than  a  thermometer ;  for  not  only  do  different 
persons,  by  reason  of  their  different  degrees  of  health,  require 
a  different  temperature,  but  for  the  same  reason  the  same 
person  may  require  a  temperature  to-day  which  would  not  be 
suitable  a  week  or  a  month  hence. 


TRUE   COUEAGE. 

TRUE  courage  is  not  so  much  marching  up  to  the  cannon's 
mouth,  in  the  hurry  of  battle,  or  mounting  the  scaffold  for  a 
principle,  or  enduring  the  surgeon's  knife,  as  by  living  un- 
known and  poor  in  a  great  city,  striving  hard,  day  by  day, 
for  daily  bread ;  yet  striving  hopefully,  resolutely,  uncom- 
plainingly, and  rightfully.  Many  a  young  heart  from  the 
country,  of  poor  but  pious  parents,  comes  every  year  to  Ne\v 
York,  and  thus  labors,  in  hope  of  keeping  dear  ones  at  home, 
until  life  itself  is  worked  out,  and  uncheered  by  any  kindly 
word,  uusustained  by  any  helping  hand,  unaided  by  any  pure 


238  CLEAN  TOUR   CELLARS. 

philanthropist,  unsought  by  any  man  of  God,  whose  mission 
is  to  seek  out  and  "feed  my  lambs,"  he  goes  down  to  the 
grave,  exclaiming,  "Thou,  God,  only  hast  been  my  helper." 


CLEAN  YOUR  CELLARS. 

BY  a  beneficial  arrangement  of  Providence,  the  gases  and 
odors  most  prejudicial  to  human  life  are  lighter  than  the  air 
which  surrounds  us,  and,  as  soon  as  disengaged,  rise  immedi- 
ately to  the  upper  atmosphere,  to  be  purified  and  then 
returned  to  be  used  again. 

The  warmer  the  weather,  the  more  rapidly  are  these  gases 
generated,  and  the  more  rapidly  do  they  rise ;  hence  it  is, 
that  in  the  most  miasmatic  regions  of  the  tropics  the  traveller 
can  with  safety  pursue  his  journey  at  midday,  but  to  do  so  in 
the  cool  of  the  evening,  or  morning,  or  midnight,  would  be 
certain  death.  Hence,  also,  the  popular,  but  too  sweeping 
dread  of  "  night  air."  To  apply  this  scientific  truth  to  practi- 
cal life  in  reference  to  the  cellars  under  our  dwellings,  is  the 
object  of  this  article. 

In  the  first  place,  no  dwelling-house  ought  to  have  a  cellar. 
But  in  large  cities  the  value  of  land  makes  them  a  seeming 
necessity,  but  it  is  only  seeming,  for  during  many  years'  resi- 
dence in  New  Orleans  we  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  half 
n  dozen  cellars.  But  if  we  must  have  them,  let  science  con- 
struct them  in  such  a  manner,  and  common  sense  use  them  in 
such  a  way,  as  to  obviate  the  injuries  which  would  otherwise 
result  from  them. 

The  ceilings  of  cellars  should  be  well  plastered,  in  order 
most  effectual ly  to  prevent  the  ascent  of  dampness  and  noi- 
some odors  through  the  joints  of  the  flooring. 

The  bottom  of  the  cellar  should  be  well  paved  with  stone, 
cobble-stones  are  perhaps  best ;  over  this  should  be  poured, 
to  the  extent  of  several  inches  in  thickness,  water-lime  ce- 
ment, or  such  other  material  as  is  known  to  acquire  in  time 
almost  the  hardness  of  stone  ;  this  keeps  the  dampness  of  the 
earth  below. 

If  additional  dryness  is  desired,  for  special  purposes,  in 


CLEAN  TOUR   CELLARS.  239 

parts  of  the  cellar,  let  common  scantling  be  laid  down,  at 
convenient  distances,  and  loose  boards  be  laid  across  them 
for  convenience  of  removal  and  sweeping  under,  when  clean- 
ing time  of  the  year  comes. 

The  walls  should  be  plastered,  in  order  to  prevent  the  dust 
from  settling  on  the  innumerable  projections  of  a  common 
stone  wall. 

Shelves  should  be  arranged  in  the  centre  of  the  cellar,  not 
in  the  corners,  or  against  the  walls ;  these  shelves  should 
hang  from  the  ceiling  by  wooden  arms,  attached  firmly  before 
plastering ;  thus  you  make  all  safe  from  rats. 

To  those  who  are  so  fortunate  as  to  own  the  houses  in 
which  they  live,  we  recommend  the  month  of  June,  but  to 
renters,  the  great  moving  month  of  May,  in  New  York  at 
least,  as  the  most  appropriate  time  for  the  following  recom- 
mendations. 

Let  everything,  not  absolutely  nailed  fast,  be  removed  into 
the  yard  and  exposed  to  the  sun,  and,  if  you  please,  remain 
for  a  week  or  two,  so  as  to  afford  opportunity  for  a  thorough 
drying. 

Let  the  walls  and  floors  be  swept  thoroughly,  on  four  or 
five  different  days,  and  let  a  coat  of  good  whitewashing  be 
laid  on. 

These  things  should  be  done  once  a  year ;  and  one  day  in 
the  week,  at  least,  except  in  midwinter,  every  opening  in  the 
cellar,  for  several  hours,  about  noon,  should  be  thrown  wide, 
so  as  to  allow  as  complete  a  ventilation  as  possible.  Scien- 
tific men  have  forced  on  the  common  mind,  by  slow  degrees, 
the  importance  of  a  daily  ventilation  of  our  sleeping  apart- 
ments, so  that  now  none  but  the  careless  or  most  obtuse 
neglect  it ;  but  few  think  of  ventilating  their  cellars,  although 
it  is  apparent  that  the  noisome  dampness  is  constantly  rising 
upwards  and  pervading  the  whole  dwelling. 

Emanations  from  cellars  do  not  kill  in  a  night ;  if  they  did, 
universal  attention  would  be  forced  to  their  proper  manage- 
ment ;  but  it  is  certain,  from  the  very  nature  of  things,  that 
unclean,  damp,  and  mouldy  cellars,  with  their  sepulchral 
fumes,  do  undermine  the  health  of  multitudes  of  families, 
and  send  many  of  their  members  to  an  untimely  grave  ;  espe- 
cially must  it  be  so  in  New  York,  where  the  houses  are 


240  HOW  TO  LEND  MONET. 

generally  constructed  in  such  a  manner  that  the  ordinary 
access  to  the  cellar,  for  coal,  wood,  vegetables,  &c.,  is  within 
the  building,  and  every  time  the  cellar  door  is  opened  the 
draught  from  the  grating  in  the  street  drives  the  accumula- 
tion of  the  preceding  hours  directly  upwards  into  the  halls 
and  rooms  of  the  dwelling,  there  to  be  breathed  over  and 
over  again  by  every  member  of  the  household,  thus  poison- 
ing the  very  springs  of  life,  and  polluting  the  whole  blood. 

With  these  views,  we  earnestly  advise  our  city  readers,  as  a 
life-saving  thought,  in  the  selection  of  a  dwelling  for  the 
ensuing  year,  to  give  ten  per  cent,  more  for  a  home  which  has 
a  model  cellar ;  you  will  more  than  save  it  in  doctors'  bills, 
in  all  probability,  to  say  nothing  of  taking  pills,  and  drops, 
and  bitters,  and  gin,  from  one  month's  end  to  another.  Let 
a  good  cellar  determine  your  choice,  rather  than  the  more 
coveted  "  brown-stone  front,"  or  the  locality  of  Fourteenth 
Street,  Union  Square,  or  Fifth  Avenue. 


HOW  TO  LEND  MONEY,  IF  YOU  LEND  AT  ALL. 

To  your  friends  !  As  a  pure  business  transaction,  you  may 
not  be  too  careful.  But  when  a  friend  of  other  years  comes 
along,  who  has  not  been  as  successful  as  yourself,  whom  dis- 
appointment, or  misplaced  confidence,  or  unavoidable  calami- 
ty has  pressed  to  the  earth,  —  a  friend  who  was  once  your 
equal  in  all  things,  inferior  in  none,  except,  perhaps,  that 
hardness  of  character  which  is  a  general  element  of  success  in 
life,  —  don't  begin  to  hem  and  haw,  and  stroke  your  chin ; 
don't  talk  about  "  buts,"  and  "  whys,"  and  the  "  tightness  of 
the  money  market,"  —  he  knows  that  already  ;  spare  him  the 
intelligence  that  you  "once  loaned  Mr.  So-and-so  a  sum  of 
money  which  was  never  returned  ;  " — he  don't  want  your  biog- 
rsiphy,  he  wants  your  cash.  Don't  remind  him  that  if  he  were 
to  die,  you  would  lose  it :  that  arrow  may  sink  deeper  into 
his  heart  than  any  amount  of  money  could  ever  fathom ;  and 
then  close  with  a  recital  of  this,  that,  and  the  other  thing, 
which,  if  really  true,  could  not  materially  interfere  with  your 
furnishing  him  the  required  amount.  If  you  have  ordinary 


HOW   TO  LEND  MONEY.  241 

sagacity,  you  can  make  up  your  mind  in  a  moment  whether 
to  grant  the  accommodation  or  to  refuse  it.  If  you  are  a 
man,  and  you  design  a  refusal,  tell  him  at  once,  in  some  kind- 
ly way,  that  you  do  not  feel  prepared  to  accede  to  his  wishes. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  have  a  heart  to  help  him,  don't  do 
it  as  if  you  felt  it  were  a  mountain  grinding  you  to  powder, 
or  as  if  each  dollar  you  parted  from  was  inflicting  a  pain 
equal  to  the  drawing  of  a  tooth ;  don't  torture  him  with  cross- 
questioning,  nor  worm  out  of  him  some  of  the  most  sacred 
secrets  of  his  life  ;  away  with  your  inquisitorial,  brassy  imper- 
tinence ;  don't  lay  him  on  the  rack  for  an  hour  at  a  time,  as 
if  you  gloated  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  manhood,  as  if  you 
wished  to  make  him  go  down  on  his  very  knees  to  win  his 
way  into  your  purse.  Away  with  it  all,  we  say,  and  stand  up 
like  a  man  ;  give  him  a  cordial  greeting ;  let  a  holy  sunshine 
light  up  your  countenance,  and  speak  out  before  he  has  done 
asking ;  tell  him  how  much  you  are  gratified  in  having  it  in 
your  power  to  help  him ;  and  let  that  help  go  out  in  a  full, 
free  soul,  and  with  a  good  slap  on  the  shoulder  bid  him  look 
upward  and  ahead,  for  there's  sunshine  there  for  him.  Why, 
the  very  feeling  in  that  man's  heart,  as  he  goes  away  from  you, 
is  worth  more  to  humanity  than  all  the  money  you  let  him 
have,  ten  times  told.  He  goes  out  of  your  presence  with  a 
heart  as  light  as  a  feather,  in  love  with  all  the  \vorld,  and  full 
of  admiring  gratitude  towards  you.  He  feels  his  manhood  ; 
he  feels  that  confidence  is  reposed  in  him,  —  that  he  is  still  a 
man ;  and  this  conviction  nerves  him  up  to  a  resolution,  to  an 
ambition,  to  an  energy,  which  are  of  themselves  a  guarantee 
of  after-success.  He  goes  to  work  with  a  will,  which  hews 
down  the  obstacles  and  melts  away  the  icebergs  which 
hedge  up  the  ways  of  men ;  and  behold,  in  a  moment,  rough 
places  are  made  smooth,  and  straight  places  made  plain  to 
him. 

Reader  !  suppose  you  never  get  your  money  back,  and  you 
have  a  heart  so  big,  that  you  can,  notwithstanding  his  non- 
payment, give  him  at  every  meeting  a  cordial  smile  of  friendly 
recognition,  can  speak  to  him  without  ever  reminding  him  of 
his  indebtedness  ;  it  may  be  that  you  are  his  only  friend,  but 
then  you  are  the  world  to  him,  and  however  hardly  that  world 
may  have  dealt  with  him,  your  single. exception  is  placed  to 


242  CAUSE   OF  DEATH. 

the  credit  side  of  humanity,  a  thousand  times  its  individual 
value ;  that  man  can  never  die  a  misanthrope,  for  he  will 
insist  upon  it,  to  his  latest  breath,  "  there's  kindness  in  the 
world,  after  all."  What  a  grand  thing  it  is  to  have  a  man 
close  his  eyes  in  death,  and  one  of  the  last  thoughts  of  mor- 
tality be  a  prayer  for  blessings  on  your  head. 

We  repeat,  then,  if  you  lend  money  at  all,  do  so  freely, 
promptly  ;  do  it  with  a  whole  soul.  Do  it  with  a  grace  that 
becomes  a  man,  with  a  cordiality  which  will  do  quite  as  much 
as  your  money  in  raising  your  friend  from  the  depressing  in- 
fluences which  surround  him.  We  do  not  advise  the  loan  of 
money  in  any  given  ca^e,  but  write  to  show  in  what  manner 
it  should  be  done,  when  decided  upon,  to  bring  the  most 
pleasant  reminiscences  to  yourself  hereafter,  and  to  carry 
with  it  the  largest  advantages  to  him  whom  you  wish  to 
befriend. 


CAUSE  OF  DEATH. 

MEDICAL  science  is  much  indebted  to  the  able  researches  of 
Wundt.  In  one  of  these,  the  important  induction  is  drawn, 
that  "  the  proximate  cause  of  death  is  asphyxia  ;  "  that  is  to 
say,  "  a  man  dies  for  want  of  breath,"  and  science  has  found 
it  out !  But  everybody  knew  that  before,  still  it  was  knowl- 
edge with  only  one  leg ;  to  know  a  fact  is  one  thing,  to  know 
the  reason  of  it  is  a  very  different  matter ;  indeed,  it  is  all  the 
difference  between  a  wise  man  and  a  fool.  Now,  to  get  a 
practical  idea  out  of  all  this,  we  must  make  the  circuit  of 
w  Robin  Hood's  barn,"  of  infantile  memory. 

If,  when  a  man  dies,  it  is  for  want  of  breath,  how  is  it  pos- 
sible for  him  to  die  when  his  head  is  cut  off  ?  for  his  head 
does  not  breathe,  but  his  lungs  !  It  is  true  that  the  lungs  are 
supplied  with  breath  through  the  nose  and  mouth,  but  if  that 
were  all,  we  could  put  the  nozzle  of  a  bellows  in  the  wind- 
pipe and  let  the  body  dance  away  ! 

There  is  a  nerve  which  comes  from  the  brain,  —  grows  out 
of  it,  as  it  were,  and  in  coming  from  the  head  it  divides  into 
two  branches,  one  of  which  goes  to  the  stomach,  the  other  to 
the  throat  and  lungs.  If  you  cut  the  stomach  branch,  there  is 


CAUSE   OF  DEATH.  243 

no  digestion ;  if  you  divide  the  lung  branch,  there  is  no 
breathing.  If  you  injure  one  branch,  that  injury,  if  kept  in 
continuance,  affects  the  other  branch ;  hence  it  is,  that  dys- 
peptic people  have  throat-ail,  sooner  or  later ;  hence  it  is,  ihat 
such  persons  dwindle  away,  and  if  not  cured,  fall  into  a 
decline.  The  consumptive  may  eat  a  great  deal ;  and  he  has 
a  good  appetite  to  the  last  day  of  his  life,  but  his  food  does 
not  seem  to  afford  nourishment,  because  the  stomach  branch 
of  the  nerve  has  lost  its  power;  hence. he  eats,  but  it  gives 
him  no  strength ;  he  has  not  the  strength  to  breathe  without 
an  effort,  and  that  effort  he  has  not  power  to  make  except 
at  intervals ;  hence  consumptives  breathe  short  and  quick, 
and  shorter  and  quicker  to  the  last  struggle.  Consumptive 
people  do  not  die  for  want  of  lungs,  as  is  generally  supposed. 
A  man  can  live  an  age  with  half  of  all  his  lungs  in  full  opera- 
tion, and  live  in  considerable  health,  too.  General  Jackson 
had  lost  a  third  of  his  lungs,  as  his  autopsy  indicated,  twenty 
years  before  his  death.  Most  consumptives  die  long,  very 
long,  before  half  their  lungs  are  gone ;  and  why?  Simply  for 
want  of  breath  I  for  want  of  bodily  power  to  fill  the  lungs 
they  have  to  their  full  of  pure  air.  To  have  bodily  strength, 
we  must  have  a  good  digestion,  and  good  digestion  will  give 
bodily  strength  under  all  circumstances ;  hence,  to  cure  a 
consumptive,  that  is,  to  arrest  the  further  progress  of  lung 
decay,  and  enable  him  to  live  on  what  lungs  he  has  left,  the 
man  must  be  made  to  digest  substantial  meat  and  bread  —  the 
most  healthfully  nourishing  of  all  human  edibles  —  as  a  means 
of  enabling  him  to  draw  in  pure  air.  Therefore,  we  are 
impelled  to  the  conclusion  —  and  it  is  one  of  world-wide  sig- 
nificance —  that  there  are  no  means  of  arresting  the  progress 
of  consumptive  disease  in  any  case,  except  by  increasing  the 
capabilities  of  the  stomach  of  food  digestion,  to  the  end  that 
the  lungs  be  empowered  thereby  to  draw  in  and  use  a  larger 
amount  of  pure  air,  —  that  very  air  which  the  Almighty,  in 
his  wisdom,  has  made  to  be  food  for  the  lungs. 

By  a  section,  a  cutting  off,  of  this  nerve  of  which  we  have 
been  speaking,  the  Pneumogastric,  Wundt  found  that  it  re- 
quired more  time  and  more  strength  to  draw  a  sufficient 
breath ;  the  breathing  then  became  slower,  the  quantity  of 
air  inspired  gradually  diminished,  the  body  grew  colder,  the 


244  TEE  MIND. 

lungs  became  clogged,  and  the  victim  died.  Therefore, 
reader,  if  you  wish  to  be  a  "  well  man,"  perfect  your  diges- 
tion ;  perfect  your  good  breathing. 


THE    MIND. 

THAT  mysterious  thing,  the  God  within  us,  which  no  eye 
can  see,  whose  dwelling-place  none  can  tell,  yet  of  whose 
presence  the  habitable  globe  gives  note,  how  inexorably  does 
it  govern  the  body,  whose  instrument  it  is  ;  how  it  makes  or 
mars  the  human  form  divine ;  how  it  blanches  the  ruddiest 
cheek ;  how  it  dims  the  lustrous  eye  ;  how  it  bends  in  a  night 
the  stateliest  carriage,  and  in  a  night  frosts  over  the  raven 
ringlet ;  in  an  hour  strikes  down  the  strength  of  manhood, 
and  in  a  moment  can  make  itself  a  blank  for  the  balance  of 
the  lifetime  of  its  crazed  tenement ;  how  important  to  keep 
that  agent  well ;  how  heaven-like  the  skill  to  minister  to  a 
mind  diseased !  Few  persons  have  an  adequate  conception 
of  the  importance  and  frequent  need  of  mental  medication. 
"  The  very  trip  of  your  feet  along  the  corridor  makes  me  feel 
half  well  again,  doctor,"  said  a  Catholic  priest  to  me  one  day, 
as  I  entered  his  cheerless  room;  as  cheerless  and  cold,  too, 
must  be  every  room  where  the  wife  and  the  child  can  never 
come  to  brighten  and  to  happify. 

As  any  man  of  good  observation  is  his  body's  own  best 
physician  for  ordinary  slight  ailments,  so  the  mind  may  be 
rendered,  by  proper  tuitions,  its  safest  and  most  efficient  doc- 
tor. These  tuitions  should  be  early  begun  ;  they  should  com- 
mence with  the  toddling  infant  of  a  year,  by  letting  it  learn  to 
locomotc  itself,  by  giving  it  an  opportunity  of  trying  to  get 
up  the  very  first  time  it  falls  on  the  floor.  In  a  thousand 
little  ways  may  any  parent  of  good  common  sense  implant  a 
germ  —  the  habit  of  self-reliance  —  whose  subsequent  fruit- 
age may  be  the  glory  of  the  nation  ;  self-reliance,  more  price- 
less than  any  diadem  that  ever  graced  a  monarch's  brow ;  a 
"  security  "  which  the  "  tightest  times  "  only  serve  to  improve  ; 
self-reliance  which  falters  in  no  strait,  which  pales  before  no 
obstacle,  which  no  disaster  can  paralyze,  no  calamity  appall. 


THE  MIND.  245 

"Rod  dot  it,  I'll  try  it  again,"  said  a  ragged  little  urchin,  as 
he  slipped  and  fell  under  a  heavy  piece  of  timber  which  he 
was  carrying  to  his  mother  one  bleak  winter's  day ;  and  no 
sooner  said  than  done,  and  up  he  jumped,  and  raising  the 
timber  to  his  shoulder,  was  soon  lost  in  the  crowd  as  to  si^ht, 

O 

but  not  in  sound,  for  some  operatic  notes  about  "  supper  "  and 
"  old  Dan  Tucker  "  showed  a  cheery  heart  within  him,  and 
that  he  felt  there  was  gladness  at  home  for  him.  Who  doubts 
either  of  two  things ;  that  that  boy  had  a  noble  mother  at 
home,  and  that  if  he  lives  he  will  be  a  man  of  mark  in  the 
community  about  him  ? 

Within  a  month  our  city  was  startled  by  the  sudden  and 
unexpected  death  of  one  of  the  leading  members  of  a  mer- 
cantile firm  who  became  bankrupt  a  few  days  before,  origi- 
nating in  the  villany  of  a  partner  several  years  ago.  He  was 
a  man  of  noble  bearing  and  of  a  proud  spirit,  but  the  outra- 
geous abuse  of  two  or  three  remorseless  creditors,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  clerks  and  others,  so  weighed  upon  his  spirits 
that  he  died  within  forty-eight  hours.  For  his  sensitiveness 
we  owe  him  our  love  and  sympathy,  and  a  monument  to  his 
memory  will  we  give  for  the  bravery  of  an  eight  years'  effort 
to  retrieve  the  losses  which  another  brought  upon  him,  then 
ran  away ;  but  for  the  last  act  of  his  life,  the  permission  of  a 
broken  heart,  figuratively  speaking,  we  hold  him  accountable 
to  the  bar  of  society,  as  no  man  has  a  right  to  flee  on  the  oc- 
currence of  any  financial  disaster,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
his  personal  explanations  can  always  lessen  the  losses  of  his 
friends  by  enabling  them  the  better  to  gather  up  the  frag- 
ments ;  so  no  man  has  a  right  to  run  away  from  himself  to 
take  refuge  in  death,  by  cherishing  the  remorses  of  an  injured 
spirit,  especially,  when,  as  in  this  case,  those  remorses  arise 
from  a  miseducated  integrity  or  a  miseducated  conscience  as 
to  financial  matters.  It  is  immaterial  what  Mrs.  Grundy  will 
say,  or  what  the  world  may  think  of  our  conduct,  as  long  as 
we  are  conscious  of  a  well-informed  mercantile  integrity. 
With  that,  a  man  may  utterly  fail  half  a  dozen  times,  and 
stand  the  higher  after  each  successive  failure,  as  did  Josiah 
Lawrence,  of  Cincinnati ;  and  with  a  proper  portion  of  the 
self-reliance  of  the  ragged  and  overburdened  boy  on  the  street, 
such  a  man  will  die  at  last,  in  the  most  desirable  sense  of  the 
word,  "a  successful  man." 


246  SENSE  AND  NONSENSE. 


SENSE  AND  NONSENSE. 

MANY  persons  have  the  intelligence  to  feel  that  exercise  is 
essential  to  good  health,  but  domestic  and  financial  duties 
press  upon  them  so  much  that  it  is  only  occasionally  that  the 
claims  of  health  attract  their  practical  attention,  and  then  they 
go  about  it  with  a  kind  of  spasmodic  desperation,  as  if  they 
intended  to  do  as  much  in  a  day  as  would  answer  for  a  month 
past  and  to  come.  The  early  spring-time  has  a  peculiar  influ- 
ence in  waking  up  the  dormant  industries  of  this  class  of  per- 
sons, and  on  some  sunny  morning  they  sally  out  with  rake,  or 
axe,  or  spade,  or  hoe,  and  with  the  energy  of  a  quarter  horse, 
the}r  carry  everything  before  them  for  an  hour,  or  perhaps 
several  hours,  when,  before  they  are  aware  of  it,  their  strength 
is  exhausted  ;  they  feel  "  weak  as  water ;  "  the  whole  body  is  in 
a  perspiration ;  and,  weary  and  worn  out,  and  overheated, 
they  make  for  the  house,  the  ordinary  warmth  of  which  now 
seems  oppressive,  and  with  hat  and  coat  or  shawl  laid  aside, 
they  throw  themselves  on  the  sofa,  in  some  cool  part  of  the 
house,  and  fall  asleep  ;  or,  if  they  do  not,  they  take  early  sup- 
per and  go  to  bed,  waking  up  in  the  morning  haggard,  sick- 
ish,  and  as  stiff  and  sore,  in  joint  and  limb  and  muscle,  as  a 
veteran  rheumatic  of  half  a  century ;  and  for  days,  if  not  for 
weeks,  they  feel  more  dead  than  alive,  and  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  exercise  does  not  agree  with  them,  and  it  takes 
them  about  a  year  to  get  rid  of  the  conviction. 

For  sedentary  persons  to  exercise  safely  and  with  advan- 
tage, a  few  rules  should  be  strictly  adhered  to. 

1.  Let  your  labor  be  moderate,  and  of  short  duration  for 
the  first  day,  gradually  increasing  it  from  day  to  day  in  time 
and  intensity. 

2.  The  moment  you  cease  the  exercise,  whatever  it  may  be, 
put  on  the  garments  you  laid  aside  before  you  began,  go  at 
once  to  the  house  and  sit  down  by  a  fire,  or  in  some  warm 
room  or  kitchen,  if  necessary,  without  washing,  or  drinking, 
or  eating,  and  in  the  course  of  fifteen  minutes,  according  to 
circumstances,  push   back  from  the  fire,  take   off  your  hat, 
next  lay  aside  any  surplus  garment,  then  wash  your  face  and 


SENSE  AND  NONSENSE.  247 

hands  in  tepid,  if  not  warm  water,  with  soap ;  take  a  very 
little  supper,  that  is,  a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  and 
half  a  glass  of  water,  and  at  your  usual  hour  retire  to  bed. 
Exercise,  with  such  precautions,  will  seldom  fail  to  yield  the 
richest  and  most  enduring  results  :  a  sound  sleep  for  the  night, 
a  keen  appetite  in  the  morning,  with  a  feeling  of  newness  and 
freshness  and  vigor  next  day,  delightful  to  think  of. 

We  cannot  here  enter  into  a  detailed  explanation  of  the 
reasons  for  all  this,  but  will  merely  state  the  governing  idea, 
which  is,  that  getting  cool  slowly  makes  all  the  difference  be- 
tween exercise  which  is  beneficial  and  exercise  which  aggra- 
vates the  evils  it  was  intended  to  cure. 

To  impress  this  on  the  mind  more  fully,  we  have  only  to 
state  this  interesting  fact,  that  on  the  surface  of  the  body 
there  are  millions  of  little  tubes  which  are  always  conveying 
effete,  useless  matter  from  the  system,  either  in  a  solid,  fluid, 
or  gaseous  form,  but  during  exercise  these  operations  are  car- 
ried on  with  greatly  increased  activity ;  a  dash  of  cold  air  or 
cold  water  instantly  closes  up  the  outlet  of  each  one  of  these 
little  tubes,  which,  if  placed  continuously,  would  amount  to 
many  miles  in  length,  and  this  sudden  check  is  as  infallible  a 
cause  of  bodily  calamity  as  the  explosion  of  a  steam  boiler 
under  a  full  head  of  steam,  if  the  valve  is  shut  and  kept  down 
after  the  engine  has  ceased  motion.  Hence  no  man  ever  did 
or  ever  can  fall  asleep  uncovered,  or  in  a  draught  of  air,  after 
exercising,  without  waking  up  with  unpleasant  feelings  of  all 
degrees,  from  a  slight  pain  or  soreness,  to  the  agonies  of  dis- 
solution in  a  few  hours. 

How  illy  nature  bears  the  sudden  arrest  of  some  of  her 
operations,  is  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  fact,  that  if  the 
blandest  of  all  liquids,  lukewarm  milk,  is  injected  into  a 
blood-vessel,  against  the  current,  instant  death  may  result, 
but  if  introduced  gently  in  the  direction  of  the  current,  it  is 
borne  with  impunity. 


248  HEALTH  AND   WEALTH. 


HEALTH   AND   WEALTH. 

MOST  persons  have  a  kind  of  spite  or  grudge  against  rich 
people,  the  foundation  of  which  we  presume  is  ill  envy,  — 
one  of  the  very  meanest  feelings  of  our  nature.  "  He  has 
more  than  his  share,  more  than  he  can  use,  and  I  have  less. 
My  family  are  starving,"  said  a  poor  fellow  one  day,  when 
he  was  asked  if  he  had  anything  to  say  in  mitigation  of  his 
sentence  for  a  paltry  theft  from  his  wealthy  neighbor's  prem- 
ises, "  and  people  ought  to  be  made  to  divide."  "  But  sup- 
pose there  was  an  equal  division,"  replied  the  judge,  who 
for  a  moment  felt  willing  to  humor  the  prisoner's  absurdity ; 
"your  idle  habits  and  the  industry  of  your  neighbor  would 
soon  make  as  wide  a  difference  between  your  respective  con- 
ditions as  there  exists  at  present."  "Very  true,  your  honor," 
said  lazy  ;  "then  we  would  divide  again." 

Just  as  ridiculously  absurd  and  one-sided  are  many  of  the 
sentiments  entertained  by  the  poor  towards  their  more  thrifty 
fellow-citizens.  But  the  rich  can  afford  the  indulgence  of 
these,  and  kindred  feelings,  against  them. 

Many  of  us  have  a  sufficient  want  of  magnanimity  to  cherish 
an  unexpressed  chuckle  of  gratification  at  the  intelligence  that 
some  notably  rich  family  has  met  with  some  sudden  calamity, 
personal,  domestic,  or  pecuniary;  and  sometimes  the  less 
cautious  out-slip  such  an  expression  as,  "  Served  them  right." 
"Ah,  his  wealth  couldn't  save  him."  "He  ought  to  have 
trouble."  "  Nothing  more  than  he  deserves."  How  intini- 
tesirnally  small  is  the  poor  human  heart  sometimes,  in  some 
of  its  phases  !  Of  a  multitude  of  wrong  impressions  about 
the  rich,  we  single  out  one,  more  particularly  appropriate  to 
these  pages.  It  is  this,  that  one  of  the  penalties  of  wealth 
is  disease.  This  is  not  so.  The  rich  are  not  more  sickly,  as 
a  class,  than  the  poor ;  they  are  not  as  much  exposed  to  the 
causes  of  disease  as  the  poor  are ;  their  lives  are  more  equa- 
ble ;  less  subject  to  great  exposures,  whether  to  the  extremes 
of  labor,  or  of  active  effort,  or  of  heat  and  cold,  and  privation 
and  hunger.  Statistics  in  European  countries  plainly  show 
that  the  average  age  of  the  well-to-do  in  the  world  is  greater, 


HEALTH  AND    WEALTH.  249 

by  quite  a  number  of  years,  than  that  of  the  struggling  poor. 
If  the  price  of  health  were  poverty,  then  it  is  a  bootless  en- 
deavor to  strive  for  the  means  of  securing  comfortable  dwell- 
ings, and  abundant  fuel  and  clothing  and  provision  for  the 
cheerless  winter-time.  Especially  is  it  true  in  large  towns 
and  in  cities,  that  it  is  the  children  of  the  poor,  who,  from 
want  and  neglect,  fill  our  graveyards ;  often  does  the  weekly 
mortuary  report  show  the  appalling  fact  that  more  than  half 
of  all  who  die  are  young  children  ;  and  a  more  minute  exami- 
nation of  the  list  shows  to  the  physician  that  the  very  large 
proportion  of  such  deaths  are  those  which  have  their  origin 
in  exposure  and  want  and  cold.  How  few  of  our  compara- 
tively very  rich  men  die  short  of  the  sixties.  In  New  Orleans, 
where  exposures  at  certain  seasons  are  so  fatal,  the  very  rich 
live  to  an  old  age,  as  witness  McDonough,  and  Touro,  and 
Fisk,  and  Wilder,  and  a  long  list  of  others.  Their  wealth 
made  exposures  less  necessary,  and  enabled  them  to  take 
the  world  easy,  —  a  prophylactic  which  counteracts  many  a 
drunken  bout,  many  a  midnight  carousal,  many  a  gormandic 
dinner ;  as  witness,  too,  the  lords  and  bishops  and  chancellors 
and  dukes  of  England,  who  so  often  measure  to  the  eighties, 
and  at  last,  like  the  "Iron  Duke,"  die  with  their  harness  on, 
in  the  full  performance  of  their  civil  duties ;  to  which  results 
we  believe  they  are  mainly  indebted  to  their  wealth,  which 
affords  to  them  the  comforts  of  life  without  embarrassment, 
while  it  gives  them  time  for  all  things,  relieving  them  from 
that  weary,  wearing,  wasting  away,  which  is  the  inevitable 
result  of  our  Yankee  hurry  ;  time  and  means  to  roll  in  the 
carriage,  to  drive  in  the  phaeton,  or  gallop  on  the  horse,  over 
hills  and  dales,  and  far  away.  Our  word  for  it,  half  of  all 
the  glorifications  of  poverty  and  its  advantages,  which  so 
often  help  to  turn  a  sentence  or  to  fill  out  a  line,  are  mere 
balderdash,  the  coinings  of  fledglings  of  the  quill,  or  of 
brandied  brains.  We  never  could  see  any  advantages  in 
poverty  which  intelligent  wealth  could  not  compass.  Pov- 
erty, per  se,  is  disreputable  to  any  man,  just  as  wealth,  of 
itself,  is  creditable  to  its  possessor,  being,  as  it  is,  prima  facie 
evidence  of  long  years  of  industrious  economies  and  coura- 
geous self-denials.  That  worthy  people  may  be  poor,  and 


250  HEALTH  AND    WEALTH. 

that  unworthy  people  may  be  rich,  we  do  not  contravene. 
We  are  speaking  of  the  rules,  not  the  exceptions. 

In  our  opinion,  those  who  reprobate  the  rich  so  glibly  are 
a  set  of  poor,  lazy  good-for-nothings,  whose  idolatry  is  their 
ease,  whose  god  is  their  belly,  and  who  glory  in  their  shame. 
Who  pretends  that  the  poverty  of  a  nation  is  not  its  crime, 
and,  reasoning  from  the  greater  to  the  less,  from  the  masses 
to  the  individuals,  is  not  particularly  unsafe  in  this  connec- 
tion. It  is  the  care  of  to-morrow,  the  gnawing,  corroding 
anxieties  for  the  future,  which  eat  away  the  health  and  life 
of  multitudes.  The  rich  man  and  the  slave  are  wholly  free 
from  this  everlasting  worm,  while  in  its  stead  there  is  an 
abiding  composure  and  quietude,  worth  more  than  all  medi- 
cine ;  and  to  this  we  attribute,  in  great  part,  the  truth  of  one 
of  the  revelations  of  the  last  census,  that  thirty-three  and  a 
third  per  cent,  more  of  blacks  were  reported  to  have  died  of 
old  age  than  of  whites,  although  there  are  seven  whites  where 
there  is  one  negro. 

There  is  another  interesting  similarity  in  the  life  of  the  rich 
man  and  the  slave.  While  the  fear  of  want  troubles  neither 
of  them,  their  previous  lives,  although  from  very  different 
causes,  bear  a  striking  resemblance.  Their  lives  have  been 
lives  of  active  industry,  lives  of  temperance  and  self-denial,— 
compulsory  as  to  the  slave,  but  from  choice,  habit,  principle, 
on  the  part  of  the  white  Dives.  We  are  speaking  specially, 
be  it  remembered,  of  those  who  have  made  their  own  for- 
tunes. 

From  the  laboratory  of  the  doctor,  then,  we  issue  this  for- 
mula, divested  of  all  its  hieroglyphical  technicalities,  and 
issue  it,  too,  with  singular  confidence  for  universal  good,  to 
wit :  — 

If  you  desire  to  live  long  in  ease  and  comfort,  free  from 
grunts  and  groans,  and  aches  and  pains ;  if  you  would  have 
a  countenance  of  genial  sunshine,  instead  of  vinegar ;  if  you 
would  be  overflowing  with  risibilities,  instead  of  being  racked 
with  rheumatics,  get  rich,  by  spending  your  youth  in  tem- 
perate industries  and  prudent  economies,  having  in  view  the 
wise  and  kindly  expenditure  of  your  wealth  in  a  healthful 
old  age. 


CHECKED  PERSPIRATION.  251 


CHECKED  PERSPIRATION. 

CHECKED  perspiration  is  the  fruitful  cause  of  sickness,  dis- 
ease, and  death  to  multitudes  every  year.  If  a  tea-kettle  of 
water  is  boiling  on  the  fire,  the  steam  is  seen  issuing  from  the 
spout,  carrying  the  extra  heat  away  with  it ;  hut  if  the  lid  he 
fastened  down,  and  the  spout  be  plugged,  a  destructive  explo- 
sion follows  in  a  very  short  time. 

Heat  is  constantly  generated  within  the  human  body  by 
the  chemical  disorganization,  the  combustion,  of  the  food  we 
eat.  There  are  seven  millions  of  tubes,  or  pores,  on  the 
surface  of  the  body,  which,  in  health,  are  constantly  open, 
conveying  from  the  system,  by  what  is  called  insensible  per- 
spiration, this  internal  heat ;  which,  having  answered  its  pur- 
pose, is  passed  off  like  the  jets  of  steam  which  are  thrown 
from  the  escape-pipe,  in  puffs,  of  any  ordinary  steam-engine  ; 
but  this  insensible  perspiration  carries  with  it,  in  a  dissolved 
form,  very  much  of  the  waste  matter  of  the  system,  to  the 
extent  of  a  pound  or  two,  or  more,  every  twenty-four 
hours.  It  must  be  apparent,  then,  that  if  the  pores  of  the 
skin  are  closed,  if  the  multitude  of  valves  which  are  placed 
over  the  whole  surface  of  the  human  body  are  shut  down, 
two  things  take  place  :  First,  the  internal  heat  is  prevented 
from  passing  off:  it  accumulates  every  moment;  the  person 
expresses  himself  as  burning  up,  and  large  draughts  of  water 
are  swallowed  to  quench  the  internal  fire.  This  we  call 
fever.  When  the  warm  steam  is  constantly  escaping  from 
the  body,  in  health,  it  keeps  the  skin  moist,  and  there  is  a 
soft,  pleasant  feel  and  warmth  about  it ;  but  when  the  pores 
are  closed,  the  skin  feels  harsh  and  hot  and  dry. 

But  another  result  follows  the  closing  of  the  pores  of  the 
skin,  and  more  immediately  dangerous :  a  main  outlet  for 
the  waste  of  the  body  is  closed ;  it  remingles  with  the  blood, 
which  in  a  few  hours  becomes  impure,  and  begins  to  generate 
disease  in  every  fibre  of  the  system ;  the  whole  machinery  of 
the  man  becomes  at  once  disordered,  and  he  expresses  him- 
self as  "feeling  miserable." 

The  terrible  effects  of  checked  perspiration  of  a  dog,  who 


252  CHECKED  PERSPIRATION. 

sweats  only  by  his  tongue,  is  evinced  by  his  becoming  mad. 
The  water  runs  in  streams  from  a  dog's  mouth  in  summer  if 
exercising  freely.  If  it  ceases  to  run,  that  is  hydrophobia. 
It  has  been  asserted  by  a  French  physician,  that  if  a  person 
suffering  under  hydrophobia  can  be  only  made  to  perspire 
freely,  he  is  cured  at  once.  It  is  familiar  to  the  commonest 
observer,  that,  in  all  ordinary  forms  of  disease,  the  patient 
begins  to  get  better  the  moment  he  begins  to  perspire  ;  simply 
because  the  internal  heat  is  passing  off,  and  there  is  an  outlet 
for  the  waste  of  the  system.  Thus  it  is  that  one  of  the  most 
important  means  for  curing  all  sickness  is  bodily  cleanliness, 
which  is  simply  removing  from  the  mouths  of  these  little 
pores  that  gum  and  dust  and  oil  which  clog  them  up.  Thus 
it  is,  also,  that  personal  cleanliness  is  one  of  the  main  ele- 
ments of  health ;  thus  it  is  that  filth  and  disease  habitate 
together  the  world  over. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  perspiration  —  sensible  and  insen- 
sible. When  we  see  drops  of  water  on  the  surface  of  the 
body,  as  the  result  of  exercise  or  subsidence  of  fever,  that  is 
sensible  perspiration, — perspiration  recognized  by  the  sense 
of  sight ;  but  when  perspiration  is  so  gentle  that  it  cannot 
be  detected  in  the  shape  of  water-drops,  when  no  moisture 
can  be  felt,  when  it  is  known  to  us  only  by  a  certain  softness 
of  the  skin,  that  is  insensible  perspiration;  and  is  so  gentle 
that  it  may  be  checked,  to  a  very  considerable  extent,  without 
special  injury.  But,  to  use  popular  language,  which  cannot 
be  mistaken,  when  a  man  is  sweating  freely,  and  it  is  sud- 
denly checked,  and  the  sweat  is  not  brought  out  again  in  a 
very  few  moments,  sudden  and  painful  sickness  is  a  very 
certain  result. 

What,  then,  checks  perspiration?  A  draught  of  air  while 
we  are  at  rest,  after  exercise  ;  or  getting  the  clothing  wet,  and 
remaining  at  rest  while  it  is  so.  Getting  out  of  a  warm  bed 
and  going  to  an  open  door  or  window  has  been  the  death  of 
multitudes. 

A  lady  heard  the  cry  of  fire  at  midnight :  it  was  bitter  cold  ; 
it  was  so  near  the  flames  illuminated  her  chamber.  43he  left 
the  bed,  hoisted  the  window ;  the  cold  wind  chilled  her  in  a 
moment.  From  that  hour  until  her  death,  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury later,  she  never  saw  a  well  day. 


FAMILY  PEACE.  253 

A  young  lady  went  to  a  window  in  her  night-clothes,  to 
look  at  something  in  the  street,  leaning  her  unprotected  arms 
on  the  stone  window-sill,  which  Avas  damp  and  cold.  She 
became  an  invalid,  and  will  remain  so  for  life. 

Sir  Thomas  Colby,  being  in  a  profuse  sweat  one  night, 
happened  to  remember  that  he  had  left  the  key  of  his  wine- 
cellar  on  the  parlor  table,  and  fearing  his  servants  might 
improve  the  inadvertence  and  drink  some  of  his  wine,  he 
left  his  bed,  and  walked  down  stairs.  The  sweating  process 
was  checked,  from  which  he  died  in  a  few  days,  leaving  six 
million  dollars  in  the  English  funds.  His  illness  was  so  brief 
and  violent  that  he  had  no  opportunity  to  make  his  will,  and 
his  immense  property  was  divided  among  five  or  six  day- 
laborers,  who  were  his  nearest  relations. 

The  great  practical  lesson  which  we  wish  to  impress  upon 
the  mind  of  the  reader  is  this  :  When  you  are  perspiring 
freely,  keep  in  motion  until  you  get  to  a  good  fire,  or  to  some 
place  where  you  are  perfectly  sheltered  from  any  draught  of 
air  whatever. 


FAMILY  PEACE. 

1.  REMEMBER  that  our  will  is  likely  to  be  crossed  every 
day  ;  so  prepare  for  it. 

2.  Everybody  in  the  house  has  an  evil  nature  as  well  as 
ourselves,  and  therefore  we  are  not  to  expect  too  much. 

3.  To  learn  the  different  temper  of  each  individual. 

4.  To  look  upon  each  member  of  the  family  as  one  for 
whom  Christ  died. 

5.  When  any  good  happens  to  any  one,  to  rejoice  at  it. 

6.  When  inclined  to  give  an  angry  answer,  to  lift  up  the 
heart  in  prayer. 

7.  If,  from  sickness,  pain,  or  infirmity,  we  feel  irritable,  to 
keep  a  very  strict  watch  over  ourselves. 

8.  To  observe  when  others  are  so  suffering,  and  drop  a 
word  of  kindness  and  sympathy  suited  to  them. 

9.  To  wait  for  little  opportunities  of  pleasing,  and  to  put 
little  annoyances  out  of  the  way. 


254  THE  DOLLAR  AND  BLOOD  ARISTOCRACY. 


THE  DOLLAR  AND   BLOOD  ARISTOCRACY. 

OUR  first  visit  to  London  found  us  in  private  lodgings  — 
No.  3  Spring  Gardens.  Early  next  morning  we  sauntered 
into  St.  James's  Park,  close  by,  and  on  inquiring  the  owner- 
ship of  a  very  common,  unpainted,  dingy-looking  dwelling, 
some  three  stories  high,  if  we  remember  well,  we  learned  it 
was  the  residence  of  "  Queen  Victoria."  Not  far  from  it  was 
an  old  cow,  tied  to  a  tree,  around  which  were  congregated 
a  number  of  nurses,  each  with  a  baby  and  a  mug,  going  up 
in  turn  to  get  their  share  of  pure  and  undiluted  milk.  We 
cannot  tell  how  wide  our  unsophisticated  mouth  opened  just 
at  that  moment,  but  it  was  considerable,  if  not  more  so.  Our 
ideas  of  a  palace,  formed  away  out  yonder  in  the  grazing  pas- 
tures of  Kentucky,  a  long,  long  time  ago,  were,  that  it  could 
not  be  much  less  than  a  dozen  stories  high,  with  all  sorts  of 
towers,  and  gilded  things  to  match  ;  and  as  for  such  a  vulgar 
article  as  a  cow  being  within  miles  of  it,  we  never  dreamed  of 
such  a  thing;  but  the  reality  was  as  we  have  stated.  We 
cannot  imagine  that  Queen  Victoria  feels  at  all  lowered  in 
occupying  for  herself,  and  rearing  her  children  in  a  common 
three-story  brick  house.  It  is  on  her  blood  and  birth  that 
she  relies.  Her  character  and  her  position  are  her  pride. 
Yes  !  the  heirs  of  an  untoiled-for  income  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands a  year  are  content  to  occupy  a  three-story  brick  house. 
It  is  the  recently  rich,  the  newly-elevated,  who  revel  in  glare, 
and  glitter,  and  show.  It  is  the  brewer's  wife,  whose  whole 
ambition  is  to  get  into  society.  It  is  the  butcher's  daughter, 
who  dresses  violently.  Those  whose  positions  have  been  un- 
doubted for  generations  —  man,  woman,  or  child  —  would 
not  be  considered  "  anybody  in  particular,"  in  a  walk  along 
Broadway,  from  anything  that  pertained  to  dress ;  but  an 
observer  detects  it  in  a  moment :  there  is  an  "  air,"  there  is  a 
"  presence  "  about  them  which  needs  no  interpreter.  On  the 
other  hand,  what  violent  transitions  are  there  between  the 
"  superbly  dressed  woman  "  and  her  plebeian  face  ;  between 
the  splendid  "  turn-out "  and  its  pug-nosed  occupant ;  between 
the  bandbox  exquisite,  or  the  "flushed"  blackleg,  and  the 


THE  DOLLAR  AND  BLOOD  ARISTOCRACY.  255 

impudent  stare,  or  cowering  look,  which  are  the  inseparable 
attendants  of  the  consciously  degraded  the  world  over. 

Well !  passing  up  our  own  Fifth  Avenue,  or  down  Four- 
teenth Street,  or  around  Union  Square,  or  Madison  Park,  or 
Murray  Hill,  we  find  multitudes  of  palatial  residences  as  far 
superior  in  their  external  appearance  to  the  palace  of  St. 
James  as  one  can  well  imagine.  A  residence  costing  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  is  a  common  thing  in  the  above- 
named  localities.  The  oak  carvings  —  beautiful  and  chaste 
they  are  —  of  a  single  parlor  in  University  Place  cost  three 
thousand  dollars  ;  and  there  are  several  dwellings,  the  adorn- 
ments of  single  rooms  of  which  have  cost  fifteen,  twenty,  and 
even  as  high  as  thirty  thousand.  These  men  have  made  their 
own  money  by  severe  industry  and  patient  assiduity  in  busi- 
ness ;  and  we  are  rather  fearful  that  we  are  not  a  little  imper- 
tinent in  making  any  special  remark  about  the  outlay  of  what 
is  their  own.  The  fact  is,  we  like  a  generous  expenditure  of 
one's  means ;  it  elevates  the  man,  and  has  an  elevating  influ- 
ence on  all  about  him,  —  his  servants,  his  tradesmen,  his 
friends,  his  children,  and  all.  It  is  your  poor,  pitiful,  narrow- 
hearted,  close-fisted,  mean-minded  miser,  who  never  parts 
with  a  dollar  but  with  a  pain ;  that  is  the  kind  of  man  on 
whom  we  look  with  unpitying  contemptuousness.  But  for  all 
this,  we  have  often  inquired  whether  any  parent,  wisely  kind, 
can  bring  up  his  children  in  a  style  and  manner  of  living 
which  he  cannot  leave  them  the  means  of  sustaining.  There 
are  men  so  stupid,  that  their  heads  cannot  be  turned  by  any 
elevation  ;  no  unanticipated  heights  make  them  dizzy.  But 
to  descend  safely,  to  do  it  in  youth,  to  begin  married  life  with 
a  declivity,  who  is  equal  to  it  ?  Not  one  in  many  thousands. 
And  what  is  the  result,  ye  merchant  princes,  ye  successful 
stock-jobbers,  ye  retired  bankers  of  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
and  Boston,  we  repeat  the  inquiry?  What  is  the  necessary 
result  as  a  general  rule,  as  affecting  the  destinies  of  your  chil- 
dren, who  cannot,  if  they  go  out  into  the  world,  sustain  the 
style  of  their  father's  house?  The  boys  decline  marriage,  and 
with  it  give  up,  at  one  fell  swoop,  the  purities,  the  joys,  the 
elevations  of  domestic  life.  The  next  thing  is  to  join  some 
"  club,"  where  introductions  are  soon  made  to  the  cigar,  the 
wine-cup,  the  chess-board,  the  coarse  jest,  the  loud  laugh, 


256  EARLY  MARRIAGES. 

the  bacchanal  song,  the  rail  against  "  Puritanism,"  the  Sab- 
bath drive,  or  yachting,  or  sauntering.  Then  comes  apace 
things  said  and  done  which  the  pure  ears  of  beauty  can  never 
hear,  nor  eyes  see,  nor  hearts  conceive,  without  mantling  the 
young  cheek  with  shame. 

As  for  your  daughters,  so  loving  and  so  loved  to  you,  what 
is  their  future?  To  marry  "upwards,"  as  the  world  calls  it, 
they  cannot.  Nor  can  they  marry  men,  except  in  rare  in- 
stances, who  can  even  maintain  the  style  of  living  in  their 
father's  home.  They  must  therefore  marry  downwards,  or  not 
marry  at  all ;  and  not  marrying,  may  almost  as  well  be  dead. 
In  a  few  years  their  father  and  mother  will  be  gone.  Brothers 
have  formed  other  ties.  One  by  one  of  the  associates  of  other 
years  is  lost  from  their  visiting  list,  by  removal,  or  mar- 
riage, or  death.  Every  year  leaves  them  more  and  more 
lonely,  more  and  more  neglected  ;  and  soon  thereafter  the 
great  world  loses  sight  of  them ;  their  very  names  are  only 
now  and  then  mentioned,  while  all  this  time  they  are  consum- 
ing themselves  with  sad  memories,  and  anon  pass  unwept  into 
a  forgotten  grave. 

Therefore,  we  say  to  wealthy  parents,  if  you  truly  love 
your  children,  live  in  that  style  which  you  can  enable  each 
one  of  them  to  sustain. 


EARLY  MARRIAGES. 

EARLY  marriages  —  by  which  we  mean  under  twenty- 
three  for  the  woman,  and  under  twenty-eight  for  the  man  — 
are  the  misfortune  and  calamity  of  those  who  contract  them. 
The  constitution  of  the  woman  is  prematurely  taxed  by  early 
child-bearing,  and  is  broken  down  before  she  is  thirty-five, 
the  age  in  which  she  ought  to  be  in  all  the  glory  of  matronly 
beauty,  of  social  and  domestic  influence  and  power  and 
enjoyment.  But  instead  of  this,  in  what  condition  does 
"  thirty-five  "  find  the  great  majority  of  American  women?  — 
thin,  pale,  wasted,  hollow  cheeks,  sunken  and  dark-circled 
eyes,  no  strength,  no  power  of  endurance,  with  a  complica- 
tion of  peculiar  ailments,  which,  \vhile  they  baffle  medical 


EARLY  MARRIAGES.  257 

skill,  irritate  the  body,  and  leave  the  mind  habitually  fretful 
and  complaining ;  or  what  is  less  endurable,  throw  it  into  a 
state  of  hopeless  passivity,  of  wearisome  and  destructive  in- 
difference to  family,  children,  household,  everything ! 

The  influence  which  these  things  have  on  the  manly  ambi- 
tion of  the  husband  is  disastrous  ;  his  solicitude  and  sympa- 
thy for  his  suffering  wife  waste  the  mental  power  which 
ought  to  have  been  put  forth  on  his  business  ;  his  time  is  di- 
verted, whilst  the  reckless  waste  of  servants  unlocked  after, 
and  that  unavoidable  wreck  and  ruin  to  house  and  furniture 
and  clothing,  which  is  an  inseparable  attendant  on  every  wife- 
less family, — these  things,  we  say,  soon  begin  to  have  a 
depressing  effect  on  the  energies  of  the  young  father  and  hus- 
band, who  is  too  often  driven  into  do-nothing  indulgence, 
into  reckless  shifts,  or  into  the  forgetfulness  of  habitual 
drunkenness.  All  this  time  the  children  are  increasing  in 
number,  are  more  and  more  neglected,  growing  up  in  igno- 
vance  and  idleness ;  or  if  learning  at  all,  having  the  more 
leisure  to  learn  but  too  well  the  habits  and  practices  of  igno- 
rant, trifling,  deceiving,  blarneying,  treacherous  servants,  for 
such  the  mass  of  them  are,  as  we  know  by  sorrowful  experi- 
ence, in  all  the  large  cities  of  this  country. 

A  woman  who  begins  to  have  children  at  eighteen,  cannot 
have  that  vigor  of  body  and  mind  which  is  essential  to  a  well- 
regulated  household ;  we  say,  therefore,  to  every  young 
man,  — 

Do  not  marry  under  twenty-eight  for  yourself,  nor  under 
twenty-three  for  your  wife  ;  and  remember,  too,  that  the  best 
dower  a  woman  can  bring  you  is  a  sound  constitution  ;  it  is 
worth  more  to  you  than  "  a  fortune,"  while  its  moral  and 
physical  effect  on  the  future  health  and  happiness  of  the 
children  who  may  be  born  to  you  cannot  be  measured  by 
any  array  of  dollars. 


258  FRUITS  IN  SUMMEE. 


FRUITS  IN  SUMMER. 

BY  an  arrangement  of  Providence,  as  beautiful  as  it  is 
benign,  the  fruits  of  the  earth  are  ripening  during  the  whole 
summer.  From  the  delightful  strawberry,  on  the  opening  of 
spring,  to  the  luscious  peach  of  the  fall,  there  is  a  constant 
succession  of  delightful  aliments ;  made  delightful  by  that 
Power,  whose  loving-kindness  is  in  all  his  works,  in  order  to 
stimulate  us  to  its  highest  cultivation,  connecting  with  their 
use,  also,  the  most  health-giving  influences.  And  with  the  rich 
profuseness  of  a  well-attended  fruitcry,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
unaccountable  things  in  nature  that  so  little  attention  is  paid, 
comparatively  speaking,  to  this  branch  of  farming. 

It  is  a  beautiful  fact,  that  while  the  warmth  and  exposures 
of  summer  tend  to  biliousness  and  fevers,  the  free  use  of 
fruits  and  berries  counteract  that  tendency.  Artificial  acids 
are  found  to  promote  the  separation  of  the  bile  from  the 
blood,  with  great  mildness  and  certainty  ;  this  led  to  the  sup- 
position that  the.  natural  acids,  as  contained  in  fruits  and 
berries,  might  be  as  available,  and  being  more  palatable, 
would  necessarily  be  preferred.  Experiment  has  verified  the 
theory,  and  within  a  very  late  period  allopathic  writers  have 
suggested  the  use  of  fresh,  ripe,  perfect,  raw  fruits,  as  a  reli- 
able remedy  in  the  diarrhoeas  of  summer. 

How  strongly  the  appetite  yearns  for  a  pickle,  when  nothing 
else  could  be  relished,  is  in  the  experience  of  most  of  us.  It 
is  the  instinct  of  nature,  pointing  to  a  cure.  The  want  of  a 
natural  appetite  is  the  result  of  the  bile  not  being  separated 
from  the  blood,  and  if  not  remedied,  fever  is  inevitable,  from 
the  slightest  grades  to  that  of  bilious,  congestive,  and  yellow. 
"  Fruits  are  cooling,"  is  a  by-word,  the  truth  of  which  has 
forced  itself  on  the  commonest  observers.  But  why  they  are 
so,  they  had  not  the  time,  opportunity  or  inclination  to  inquire 
into.  The  reason  is,  the  acid  of  the  fruit  stimulates  the  liver 
to  greater  activity  in  separating  the  bile  from  the  blood,  which 
is  its  proper  work,  the  result  of  which  is,  the  bowels  become 
free,  the  pores  of  the  skin  are  open.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, fever  and  want  of  appetite  are  impossible. 


CARE   OF  THE  EYES.  259 

HOW   TO    USE   FRUITS. 

To  derive  from  the  employment  of  fruits  and  berries  all  that 
healthful  and  nutritive  effect  which  belongs  to  their  nature,  we 
should 

First.  —  Use  fruits  that  are  ripe,  fresh,  perfect,  raw. 

Second.  —  They  should  be  used  in  their  natural  state,  with- 
out sugar,  cream,  milk,  or  any  other  item  of  food  or  drink. 

Third.  —  Fruits  have  their  best  effect  when  used  in  the  early 
part  of  the  day,  hence  we  do  not  advise  their  employment  at  a 
later  hour  than  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  ;  not  that,  if  per- 
fect and  ripe,  they  may  not  be  eaten  largely  by  themselves, 
within  two  hours  of  bed-time,  with  advantage  ;  but  if  the  sour- 
ness of  decay  should  happen  to  taint  them,  or  any  liquor  should 
inadvertently  be  largely  drank  afterwards,  even  cold  water, 
acidity  of  the  whole  mass  may  follow,  resulting  in  a  night  of 
distress,  if  not  actual  or  dangerous  sickness.  So  it  is  better 
not  to  run  the  risk. 

To  derive  a  more  decided  medicinal  effect,  fruits  should  be 
largely  eaten  soon  after  rising  in  the  morning,  and  about  mid- 
way between  breakfast  and  dinner. 

An  incalculable  amount  of  sickness  and  suffering  would  be 
prevented  every  year  if  the  whole  class  of  desserts  were  swept 
from  our  tables  during  summer,  and  fresh,  ripe,  perfect  fruits 
and  berries  were  substituted,  while  the  amount  of  money  that 
would  be  saved  thereby,  at  the  New  York  prices  of  fruits, 
would,  in  some  families,  amount  to  many  dollars  —  dollars 
enough  to  educate  an  orphan  child,  or  support  a  colporter  a 
whole  year  in  some  regions  of  our  country. 


CARE   OF  THE  EYES. 

Do  not  read  or  write  before  sun-up  or  after  sundown.  Let 
the  light  fell  upon  the  page  from  behind. 

Never  read  while  lying  down.  Those  whose  eyes  are  weak 
should  never  read  or  sew  by  candle  or  gas  light,  nor  by 
twilight.  Suffer  nothing  to  be  applied  to  them,  unless  by  the 
special  advice  of  an  experienced  physician.  If  the  lids  stick 


260  DAMP  WALLS. 

together  in  the  morning  on  waking  up,  moisten  them  with  the 
saliva;  it  softens  and  dissolves  the  matter  sooner  than  any 
liquid  known.  The  best  and  safest  treatment  for  most  af- 
fections of  the  eyes  is  rest,  especially  if  weak  or  inflamed  ;  rest 
from  reading,  writing  or  sewing,  from  every  use  of  them,  which 
requires  close  observation,  spending  a  large  portion  of  the 
time  out  of  doors,  as  then  large  objects  are  mostly  viewed. 
Persevere  in  this  for  weeks  and  months  if  necessary,  and  if 
not  then  relieved,  consult  a  physician. 

Avoid  reading  on  horseback  or  in  rail-cars,  or  any  wheeled 
vehicle  while  in  motion.  Many  persons  will  find  that  in  read- 
ing before  breakfast  an  effort  is  required  to  keep  the  sight 
clear,  but  after  breakfast,  no  such  difficulty  is  experienced ; 
the  reason  is,  the  eye  under  such  circumstances  is  more  or  less 
inflamed,  that  is,  has  too  much  blood  about  it,  but  nature  calls 
that  excess  of  blood  away  to  the  stomach  after  eating,  to 
enable  it  to  perform  its  work  more  thoroughly.  Therefore, 
persons  with  weak  eyes  should  not  read  or  write,  or  do  fine 
sewing,  on  an  empty  stomach.  Our  preceptor,  Professor  Dud- 
ley, who  is  among  the  very  first  of  living  surgeons,  used  often 
to  say,  "Young  gentlemen,  never  let  anything  touch  the  eye 
or  ear  stronger  than  lukewarm  water."  We  have  but  one 
sight  to  lose,  its  preservation  merits  all  our  care,  and  it  is  un- 
wise to  tamper  with,  or  experiment  upon  an  organ  so  indis- 
pensable to  oui-  comfort,  happiness,  and  usefulness. 


DAMP  WALLS. 

MULTITUDES  of  people  contemplate  building  family  dwellings 
this  year.  Most  persons  can  bring  to  their  remembrance 
cases  where  splendid  mansions  have  been  erected  with  a 
portion  of  the  wealth  which  a  lifetime  of  well-directed  industry 
and  economy  has  secured,  and  just  about  the  time  when  every- 
thing has  been  completed,  the  owner  has  lain  down  and  died ; 
if  not,  indeed,  other  members  of  the  family.  Damp  walls  are  a 
sufficient,  yet  not  the  only  cause  of  such  a  result.  Walls  are 
not  damp  of  themselves,  but  they  are  made  so,  as  a  pane  of 
glass  is  made  damp,  the  glass  itself  being  colder  than  the 


CLEANLINESS.  261 

atmosphere  of  the  room,  condenses  some  of  the  moisture 
which  that  atmosphere  contains,  and  drops  of  water  are  formed 
on  its  surface ;  a  glass  or  pitcher  of  ice-water  presents  the 
same  appearance.  In  southern  cities,  streams  of  water  may 
be  SCQII  on  the  floor,  having  trickled  down  from  the  walls 
when  the  atmosphere  has  been  overcharged  with  vapor.  To 
prevent  this,  strips  of  wood,  an  inch  or  more  thick,  should  be 
fastened  to  the  walls,  on  which  the  laths  should  be  nailed  ;  this 
leaves  space  for  the  circulation  of  the  air,  and  keeps  the  whole 
building  dry  in  all  seasons  of  the  year.  Our  readers  may  rest 
assured  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  diseases  which 
afflict  men,  and  prevent  them  living  out  half  their  days,  literal- 
ly, arises  from  ignorance,  and  inattention  to  the  known  laws 
of  things. 


CLEANLINESS. 

CLEANLINESS  of  person  —  the  strictest  cleanliness  —  should 
be  among  the  earliest  and  most  imperative  of  our  teachings  to 
our  children  ;  not  external  cleanliness,  but  that  which  is  most 
promotive  of  health  —  cleanliness  of  the  skin,  and  the  garments 
which  are  nearest  to  it.  With  what  contempt  would  we  look 
on  the  best-dressed  and  handsomest  person  on  the  street,  if 
we  could  know  that  the  feet  had  not  been  washed  for  a  week, 
nor  the  inner  garments  for  a  month  ;  and  yet  it  is  undeniable 
that  many  persons  are  satisfied  that  the  outer  garment  should 
be  unexceptionably  clean  ;  if  that  be  whole  and  without  a  rent, 
it  matters  not  how  soiled  and  tattered  those  out  of  sight  are. 
No  such  mind  can  be  pure ;  it  implies  a  deceptiveuess  of 
heart  which  it  is  impossible  to  admire.  Let  mothers  especial- 
ly charge  it  upon  their  daughters,  from  earliest  life,  that  it  is 
actually  as  discreditable  to  have  a  hole  in  the  stocking  as  in 
the  silk  dress ;  that  a  splash  or  stain,  or  grease-spot  on  an 
inner  garment,  is  not  less  unpardonable  than  if  found  on  a 
shawl  or  cloak  or  bonnet.  Let  every  mother  feel  that  clean- 
liness, temperance,  and  thrift  are  the  antipodes  of  filth, 
bestiality,  and  improvidence,  and  that  spotless  cleanliness  of 
person,  and  purity  of  mind,  are  absolutely  inseparable. 


262  REWARD   OF  PHYSICAL  LABOR. 


REWARD  OF  PHYSICAL  LABOR. 

AT  the  funeral  of  a  clergyman  who  died  with  his  harness  on, 
at  the  age  of  eighty-eight  years,  it  was  said  of  him,  "He  was 
favored  with  a  robust  and  healthy  constitution.  On  his  father's 
farm  he  acquired  the  habit  and  love  of  agricultural  labor,  which 
he  retained  through  life,  and  which  contributed  so  eminently 
to  the  health  and  vigor,  which,  with  scarcely  any  interruption, 
he  enjoyed  all  his  days."' 

We  believe  that  the  church  commits  an  error  in  putting 
young  men  into  the  ministry  so  early.  If  the  Divine  Author 
of  our  religion  worked  at  the  trade  of  a  carpenter  until  he 
began  to  be  about  thirty  years  of  age,  we  see  no  sufficient 
reason  why  men  less  divine,  and  so  immeasurably  less  gifted, 
should  hurry  into  it  at  an  earlier  period,  with  all  their  in- 
experience of  men  and  things ;  that  very  inexperience  which 
has  led  many  a  talented  young  clergyman  into  the  commission 
of  mistakes,  which  have  colored  a  subsequent  lifetime ;  mis- 
takes, which  have  made  life  a  failure. 

We  are  not  sure  that  a  five  years'  course  of  working  with 
one's  hands  for  daily  bread  would  not,  in  the  long  run,  be 
productive  of  incalculable  benefits  to  the  church  and  to  the 
world. 

1.  It  would  raise  up  a  ministry  of  robust  health,  capable  of 
performing  in  one  year  more  real  hard  work  in  the  field  of  the 
world,  than   would   a  score  of  theological  fledglings  of  the 
present  day. 

2.  It   would   give    a    ministry   who,    knowing    something 
of  human   nature,  could   sympathize  with  its  sorrows,  could 
compassionate  its  weaknesses,  and  could,  having  been  tempted 
as  we  are,  be  touched  with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities  ;  could 
weep   with   those   who   weep,    and   rejoice  with   those  who 
rejoice. 


GET  MARRIED.  263 


GET  MARRIED. 

YOUNG  ladies,  you  will  never  be  satisfied  until  you  do  !  It 
is  the  surest  road  to  a  long  life  and  a  happy  one.  There  is  a 
thorn  in  the  path  now  and  then,  but  there  is  a  rose  always 
hard  by.  Did  you  never  know  it  before  ?  We  will  tell  you 
something.  We  never  heard  it  or  read  it.  We  found  it  out. 
Doctors,  you  know,  are  very  inquisitive  folks,  always  prying 
and  peeping  about,  through  their  own  eyes,  and  other  peo- 
ple's ;  and  when  these  are  not  sufficient,  they  use  their  micro- 
scope, —  a  very  favorite  instrument  with  some  of  them,  inas- 
much as  it  enables  them 

"  To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen  " 

by  anybody  except  themselves ;  and  full  often  they  are  like 
the  sailor  on  the  lookout :  he  could  not  see  land  exactty,  but 
he  could  pretty  near  do  it.  Well,  all  at  once,  one  day,  this 
bright  idea  (so  we  call  it  for  the  present ;  it  may  after- 
wards arise  to  a  fact,  for  there  is  a  shade  of  difference 
between  the  twain)  broke  in  upon  us  effulgently.  The  roses 
and  the  thorns  of  married  life  are  not  one  and  indivisible ; 
they  grow  on  separate  stocks,  and  all  that  is  required  to  part 
them  is  a  good  head  and  a  kind  heart.  There  is  one  diffi- 
culty in  the  way  :  the  thorns  are  indestructible,  but  you  have 
only  to  throw  them  aside,  and  if  anybody  else  chooses  to 
pick  them,  that  is  their  lookout ;  every  one  must  see  for 
himself.  A  bunch  of  this  sort  happened  to  fall  to  our  lot  once 
upon  a  time,  but  we  can  easily  account  for  it,  and  that  is 
highly  satisfactory :  we  always  had  weak  eyes,  and  the  vicin- 
age thereof  is  much  of  a  sameness,  in  a  certain  phase  of  the 
moon.  But  we  fully  calculate  on  repeating  the  operation  ;  and 
we  intend  to  have  a  pair  of  specs,  next  time,  such  as  will 
diminish  the  blinding  glare  which  curls  and  cotton,  in  certain 
conjunctions,  attitudes,  and  combinations  do  most  devastat- 
ingly  throw  around  them. 

Not  long  since  a  man  was  head  over  heels  in  debt,  and  he 
declared  that  his  last  speculation  left  him  head  over  heeler. 
So,  one  who  tries  by  marriage  to  get  out  of  trouble,  some- 


264  OUR  DAUGHTERS. 

times  gets  into  greater ;  but  in  the  large  main,  marriage  is 
the  balm  of  life,  —  it  is  the  natural  condition  of  human  kind  ; 
hence  Divinity  has  ordained  it. 

The  idea  which  we  wished  to  convey,  in  connection  with 
the  heading  of  this  article,  is,  that  while  more  women  than 
men,  in  the  country  at  large,  die  of  consumption  yet  five 
hundred  married  men  will  die  of  consumption,  while  three 
hundred  married  women  die  of  it.  Therefore,  as  to  women, 
marriage,  after  twenty-five,  is  a  preventive  of  consumption. 


OUR  DAUGHTERS. 

OUR  daughters  are  the  hope  of  our  country's  future.  Their 
physical,  moral,  and  domestic  education  are  of  an  importance 
which  no  array  of  figures  can  express,  which  multitudes  of 
ponderous  tomes  could  not  adequately  portray. 

As  is  the  mother,  so  is  the  man.  If  she  be  a  woman  of 
physical  vigor,  a  high  guarantee  is  given  of  healthy  children. 
If  her  moral  character  is  pure,  formed  in  the  mould  of  Bible 
piety,  we  may  anticipate  for  her  offspring  lives  of  the  self- 
same piety,  with  its  benevolent  influences  spreading  far  and 
wide  from  all  their  habitations. 

If  the  mother,  in  her  domestic  relations,  be  a  pattern  for  all 
that  is  cleanly  and  systematic,  and  punctual  and  prompt  and 
persevering,  with  womanly  dignity  and  lovingness  pervading 
all,  then  may  we  look  for  every  son  of  such  a  woman  to  be  a 
man  of  mark  for  his  time,  and  for  every  daughter  to  become 
a  wife  well  worthy  of  a  king. 

When  such  destinies  hang  upon  the  future  of  our  daughters, 
ought  they  to  be  hurried  from  a  loving  mother's  side  at  seven- 
teen, at  fifteen,  at  twelve,  to  the  purchased  care  of  a  govern- 
ess? to  the  herded  tuition  of  fashionable  boarding-schools, 
where  glitter  and  superficiality  and  empty  show  predominate  ; 
where  nothing  that  is  radically  useful  and  good  is  thorough  ; 
where  associations  are  inevitable  with  the  children  of  the 
parvenu,  as  well  as  with  the  scion  of  the  decayed  aristocrat, 
thus  exposing  the  pure  heart  to  the  withering  and  corrupting 
examples  of  mere  pretence  and  of  baseless  pride  ? 


RULES  FOR  THE  SICK  ROOM.  265 

The  theatre,  the  ball-room,  the  sea-shore,  or  the  spa,  are 
these  the  schools  to  mould  aright  the  character  of  the  girls 
who  are  to  be  the  mothers  of  the  next  generation  ?  Is  the 
heterogeneous  weekly  newspaper,  the  trashy  monthly,  the 
"  last  novel,"  be  it  from  whom  it  may,  —  are  these  suitable 
text-books  to  form  the  principles  of  her  who  is  soon  to  be- 
come the  wife,  the  mother,  the  matron? 

We  trust  these  suggestive  inquiries  will  arrest  the  atten- 
tion, and  command  the  mature  reflection  of  every  parent  who 
reads  this  article. 


RULES  FOR   THE   SICK  ROOM. 

NEVER  place  yourself  between  the  patient  and  the  fire,  for 
there  is  always  a  current  in  that  direction  from  all  parts  of 
the  room ;  hence  the  effluvia  from  the  sick  man  passes  by, 
and  is  breathed  by  you. 

Never  swallow  the  saliva,  nor  eat  or  drink  anything  in  a 
sick  room. 

Do  not  go  where  the  sick  are  while  in  a  perspiration,  nor 
under  any  circumstances  of  exhaustion. 

In  your  visits  to  the  sick,  in  pity  be  brief. 

In  watching  with  sick  people,  eat  a  regular  meal  before 
you  go  into  the  room,  and  repeat  at  intervals  of  not  over  four 
hours  ;  this  keeps  the  stomach  in  a  state  of  excitement,  which 
repels  infection. 

Speak  kindly,  cheerfully,  encouragingly  to  the  sick. 

In  waiting  upon  them,  study  the  happy  mean  in  anticipating 
their  wants,  without  being  annoy ingly  officious. 

Do  not  stare  at  a  sick  man,  nor  show  a  surprised  counte- 
nance ;  and  speak  softly,  with  distinctness. 


266  PERSPIRATION. 


PERSPIRATION. 

PERSPIRATION  is  the  transfusion  of  water  from  the  interior 
of  the  body,  through  the  skin,  to  without  us.  This  transfused 
fluid  is  not  pure  water,  it  is  saltish  to  the  taste,  and  it  con- 
veys, is  the  earner  of,  a  large  amount  of  various  impurities 
out  of  the  body ;  it  is  one  of  the  scavengers  of  the  human 
frame.  If  the  passage-ways,  the  hose-pipes  through  which 
the  perspiration  is  conducted,  are  closed,  these  impurities  are 
retained,  are  remixed  with  the  blood,  and  the  whole  mass  of 
it  becomes  impure  from  that  cause  within  two  minutes  and  a 
half;  and  every  two  minutes  and  a  half  the  impurity  is  more 
and  more  concentrated ;  and  so  rapidly  does  this  corrupting 
process  go  on,  and  so  deleterious  are  its  effects,  that  if  the 
whole  of  them  are  kept  closed,  by  any  gummy  substance,  or 
we  are  completely  enveloped  in  an  India-rubber  garment,  we 
would  die  in  a  few  hours. 

Moderate  exercise  keeps  these  passages  open;  hence,  those 
persons  who  are  moderately  exercising  all  day,  whether  in  or 
out  of  doors,  are  the  longest  lived,  the  world  over.  This 
moderate  exercise  is  to  the  body  what  a  fire-engine  or  a 
common  pump  is  in  practical  life  ;  it  keeps  the  fluid  passing 
along,  and  as  it  passes,  washes  us  clean  of  all  impurities. 

A  quart  of  water,  laden  with  concentrated  impurities, 
passes  through  the  skin  of  a  healthy  person  every  twenty- 
four  hours ;  hence  the  necessity  of  keeping  these  sluices  of 
the  system  always  in  operation  by  moderate  exercise,  and 
their  extensive  openings  free  by  the  strictest  habits  of  thor- 
ough personal  cleanliness. 

This  one  idea  of  keeping  the  pores  of  the  skin  steadily  open 
by  means  of  habitual  moderate  exercise  and  strict  personal 
cleanliness,  would,  if  generally  practised,  contribute  more  to 
human  happiness  than  tons  of  physic  or  millions  of  money. 


LONG  LIFE.  267 


LONG    LIFE. 

THE  physiological  law  of  animal  existence  is,  that  the  dura- 
tion of  life  should  be  at  least  five-fold  that  of  growth.  The 
horse  is  four  or  five  years  attaining  his  full  growth,  and  lives 
twenty-five  years.  The  ox  lives  fifteen,  and  the  dog  ten 
years.  The  cat  lives  six  times  the  growing  period,  the  rabbit 
eight.  Men  usually  attain  their  growth  at  about  twenty  years 
of  age,  and  yet  comparatively  few  reach  fourscore  years. 
More  than  one  half  of  all  who  are  born  do  not  attain  the 
age  of  twenty. 

Being  made  to  live  a  hundred  years,  it  is  a  sad  reflection 
that  nine  tenths  die  before  they  reach  the  half-way  house ; 
before  half  the  work  of  life  is  done.  This  result  is  owing  to 
three  main  causes  :  — 

1.  To  artificial  modes  of  life. 

2.  To  over-indulgence  of  the  appetites  and  passions  of  our 
nature. 

3.  To  the  wearing  ambition,  to  the  wasting  anxieties,  to 
the  depressing  cares  of  life. 

A  cultivated  intelligence  and  a  well-informed  conscience, 
and  these  only,  are  competent  to  remove  these  causes  of  the 
premature  decay  of  our  race.  But  mark  —  a  man  must  be 
conscientious  as  well  as  intelligent.  He  must  be  wise,  to 
know  what  is  duty;  he  must  be  moral,  to  impel  him  to  its 
discharge. 

The  secret  of  long  life  is  given  in  the  short  history  of  one 
who,  in  his  eighty-fourth  year,  was  the  picture  of  a  mellow 
old  age,  and  bade  fair  to  live  twenty  years  longer.  Sharon 
Carter,  of  Philadelphia,  at  that  great  age,  had  rarely  been 
sick.  His  life  was  one  of  industrious  out-door  activities. 
He  travelled  much,  always  on  foot;  slept  with  his  window 
wide  open,  in  all  kinds  of  weather,  and  maintained  a  cheerful 
equanimity. 

Therefore,  in  the  beautiful  language  of  that  ripe  medical 
scholar,  Dr.  Thompson,  of  London,  "Let  our  education  be 
so  conducted  as  to  train  the  mind  for  tranquil  superiority  to 
passing  cares,  and  to  qualify  for  the  exhilarating  occupations 
of  a  useful  life." 


268  OUR  DAUGHTERS  RUINED. 


OUR  DAUGHTERS  RUINED. 

WHERE?  At  fashionable  boarding-schools.  How?  In 
manner  and  form  to  wit :  — 

A  young  lady  in  good  health  was  sent  to  a  distant  city,  to 
finish  her  education  in  a  boarding-school  of  considerable  note. 
In  one  month  she  returned,  suffering  from  general  debility, 
dizziness,  neuralgic  pains,  and  headache. 

It  must  be  a  very  telling  process,  which,  in  a  single  mouth, 
transforms  a  rollicking,  romping,  ruddy-faced  girl  of  sixteen 
to  a  pale,  weakly,  failing  invalid.  It  is  not  often  done  so 
quickly ;  but,  in  the  course  of  a  boarding-school  education, 
it  is  done  thousands  of  times.  Public  thanks  are  due  to  a 
correspondent  of  the  "Buffalo  Medical  Journal,"  for  the  pains 
he  took  to  ferret  out  the  facts  of  the  daily  routine  of  the 
establishment,  the  proprietors  of  which  so  richly  merit  the 
reprobation  of  the  whole  community,  both  for  their  reckless- 
ness of  human  health  and  their  ignorance  of  physiological 
law.  Said  an  accomplished  lady  to  us,  not  long  since,  "  My 
only  daughter  is  made  a  wreck  of,  —  she  lost  her  mind  at 
that  wretched  school !  " 

At  this  model  establishment,  where  the  daughters  of  the 
rich  and  of  the  aspiring  are  prepared  for  the  grave  every 
year,  twelve  hours  are  devoted  to  study  out  of  the  twenty- 
four,  when  five  should  be  the  utmost  limit.  Two  hours  are 
allowed  for  exercise  ;  three  hours  for  eating ;  seven  hours  for 
sleep. 

Plenty  of  time  allowed  to  eat  themselves  to  death,  at  the 
expense  of  stinting  them  to  the  smallest  amount  of  time  for 
renovating  the  brain,  the  very  fountain  of  life,  upon  whose 
healthful  and  vigorous  action  depends  the  ability  of  advan- 
tageous mental  culture  and  physical  energy. 

But  what  is  the  kind  of  exercise  which  prevails  in  city 
boarding-schools?  The  girls  are  marched  through  the  streets 

O  " 

in  double  file,  dressed  violently,  of  course,  so  as  to  inure  to 
the  benefit  of  the  proprietors,  in  the  way  of  a  walking  adver- 
tisement, knowing  well  enough  that  a  file  of  young  ladies 
from  the  families  of  the  upper-ten  would  monopolize  atteii- 


SOUND   SLEEP.  269 

tion  on  any  thoroughfare,  even  Wall  Street.  But  what  does 
an  hour's  prim  walk  effect,  when,  conscious  of  being  the 
cynosure  of  every  eye,  they  are  put  on  their  most  unexcep- 
tionable behavior ;  when  a  good  side-shaking,  whole-souled 
laugh  would  subject  the  offender  to  a  purgatorial  lecture,  to 
be  repeated  daily,  perhaps,  for  a  month?  Verily,  Moloch 
has  his  worshippers  in  this  enlightened  age,  when  parents  are 
found  to  sacrifice  the  lives  of  their  daughters  for  the  reputa- 
tion of  having  them  at  the  fashionable  boarding-school. 


SOUND    SLEEP. 

ANT  man  who  can  bound  out  of  bed  as  soon  as  he  wakes, 
of  a  midwinter's  morning,  is  worth  something.  No  fear  of 
his  not  making  his  way  through  the  world  creditably,  because 
he  has  the  elements  of  a  promptitude,  decision,  and  energy 
which  guarantee  success.  To  invalids  we  make  a  comfortable 
suggestion  worth  knowing.  If  you  have  force  of  will  enough 
to  keep  you  from  taking  a  second  nap,  —  and  it  is  the  second 
nap  which  makes  its  baneful  influence  felt  on  multitudes,  — 
it  is  better  for  you  to  lie  a  while  and  think  about  it,  until  that 
feeling  of  weariness  passes  out  of  the  limbs  which  you  so 
commonly  feel.  But  to  sleep  soundly,  and  to  feel  rested  and 
refreshed  when  you  wake  up  of  a  morning,  four  things  are 
essential :  — 

1.  Go  to  bed  with  feet  thoroughly  dry  and  warm. 

2.  Take  nothing  for  supper  but  some  cold  bread  and  butter 
and  a  single  cup  of  weak  warm  tea  of  any  kind. 

3.  Avoid  over-fatigue  of  body. 

4.  For  the  hour  preceding  bedtime,  dismiss  every  engross- 
ing subject  from  the  mind,  and  let  it  be  employed  about 
something  soothing  and    enlivening,   in   cheerful  thankful- 
ness. 


270  BATHING. 


BATHING. 

ONCE  a  week  is  often  enough  for  a  decent  white  man  to 
wash  himself  all  over ;  and,  whether  in  summer  or  winter, 
that  ought  to  be  done  with  soap,  warm  water,  and  a  hog's- 
hair  brush,  in  a  room  showing  at  least  seventy  degrees 
Fahrenheit.  If  a  man  is  a  pig  in  his  nature,  then  no  amount 
of  washing  will  keep  him  clean,  inside  or  out.  Such  a  one 
needs  a  bath  every  time  he  turns  round.  He  can  do  nothing 
neatly. 

Baths  should  be  taken  early  in  the  morning,  for  it  is  then 
that  the  system  possesses  the  power  of  reaction  in  the  highest 
degree.  Any  kind  of  bath  is  dangerous  soon  after  a  meal,  or 
soon  after  fatiguing  exercise.  •  No  man  or  woman  should  take 
a  bath  at  the  close  of  the  day,  unless  by  the  advice  of  the 
family  physician.  Many  a  man,  in  attempting  to  cheat  his 
doctor  out  of  a  fee,  has  cheated  himself  out  of  his  life ;  ay, 
it  is  done  every  day. 

The  safest  mode  of  a  cold  bath  is  a  plunge  into  a  river ;  the 
safest  lime  is  instantly  after  getting  up.  The  necessary  effort 
of  swimming  to  shore  compels  a  reaction,  and  the  effect  is 
delightful. 

The  best,  safest,  cheapest,  and  most  universally  accessible 
mode  of  keeping  the  surface  of  the  body  clean,  besides  the 
once-a-week  washing  with  soap,  warm  water,  and  hog's-hair 
brush,  is  as  follows  :  — 

Soon  as  you  get  out  of  bed  in  the  morning  wash  your  face, 
hands,  neck,  and  breast ;  then,  into  the  same  basin  of  water, 
put  both  feet  at  once,  for  about  a  minute,  rubbing  them 
briskly  all  the  time ;  then,  with  the  towel  which  has  been 
dampened  by  wiping  the  face,  feet,  &c.,  wipe  the  whole  body 
well,  fast  and  hard,  mouth  shut,  breast  projecting.  Let  the 
whole  thing  be  done  within  five  minutes. 

At  night  when  you  go  to  bed,  and  whenever  you  get  out 
of  bed  during  the  night,  or  when  you  find  yourself  wakeful 
or  restless,  spend  from  two  to  five  minutes  in  rubbing  your 
whole  body  with  your  hands,  as  far  as  you  can  reach,  in 
every  direction.  This  has  a  tendency  to  preserve  that  soft- 
ness and  mobility  of  skin  which  is  essential  to  health,  and 
which  too  frequent  washings  will  always  destroy. 


NO  COMPASS  AT  SEA.  271 


NO  COMPASS  AT  SEA. 

IT  is  a  boon  of  priceless  value  to  have  an  unfaltering 
religious  belief.  One  of  the  most  affecting  incidents  in  the 
history  of  the  Divine  Redeemer  occurred  when,  looking  over 
the  multitude,  he  was  moved  with  compassion  on  them, 
"  because  they  were  as  sheep  having  no  shepherd." 

That  state  of  mind,  which  no  gold  can  purchase,  whose 
value  no  costly  gems  can  express,  which  finds  perfect  repose 
in  contemplating  the  present  individual  condition  of  humanity, 
and  its  future  irrevocable  destiny,  in  the  expression,  "The 
Judge  of  all  the  earth  will  do  right,"  —  such  a  state  of  mind, 
we  say,  bears  with  it  a,  sweetness  of  comfort  worth  more  than 
all  worlds.  And  fortunate  beyond  computation  is  that  child 
whose  reverence  for  Scripture  teachings  has  become  so  incor- 
porated with  its  very  nature  that,  even  in  mature  life,  the 
ultima  Thule  as  to  duty  and  morals  is,  "The  Bible  says  it." 

Seldom  have  these  views  had  a  stronger  corroboratiou  than 
in  a  meeting  which  we  attended  lately  in  this  city.  A 
"Shaker"  was  to  discuss  the  doctrine  of  celibacy.  The 
room  was  well  filled.  The  Shaker  was  to  speak  ten  minutes, 
and  any  one  else  might  reply  for  the  same  length  of  time. 
In  all  that  assembly  of  men  and  women  we  failed  to  discover 
one  single  countenance  which  indicated  composure.  There 
was  an  expression  of  anxious  unrest,  so  general  that  we  were 
moved  to  pity.  The  women  had  a  kind  of  he-look,  which 
was  grating  to  our  feelings.  There  was  only  one  female  face 
there  to  which  we  could  turn  for  relief,  which  was  found  in 
a  certain  benignity  of  expression  which  eventually  cleared 
away  that  "first  impression"  of  one  of  the  ugliest,  little 
old  phizzes  which  we  had  been  lately  called  on  to  contemplate. 

As  to  the  men,  there  were  two  classes  :  One  whose  "ex- 
pression "  indicated  that  they  had  missed  the  aim  of  life ;  that 
they  were  deeply  dissatisfied  with  their  status,  and  were  seek- 
ing, revengefully,  for  a  change.  There  was  another  set  of 
countenances,  few  in  comparison,  but  as  widely  different  as 
daylight  is  from  darkness.  There  was  the  high,  broad  fore- 
head, benign  and  intelligent,  as  if  the  owners  wished  all  men 


272  UNTIMELY  EXERCISE. 

to  be  bappy,  and  felt  it  to  be  their  duty  to  labor  for  that 
happiness ;  conscious  of  their  intelligence,  and  of  their  duty 
to  employ  it  in  search  of  the  true  secret  of  the  highest  human 
good. 

In  the  speeches  made,  there  was  a  frequent  quotation  of 
Scripture  ;  but  in  such  a  way  as  to  impress  us  with  the  feel- 
ing that  the  quotations  were  made,  not  because  of  a  loving 
and  reverential  confidence  in  Scripture  authority,  but  from  a 
conviction  that  it  was  authoritative  in  most  of  those  who  were 
present ;  as  much  as  to  say,  "  You  see  I  am  on  the  side  of 
the  Bible ;  do  not  be  afraid  of  me  as  of  an  infidel." 

Be  assured,  reader,  that  no  scheme  of  human  amelioration 
ever  can  succeed  where  the  Bible  is  not  received  in  the  love 
of  it;  hence  the  miserable  failures  of  Ann  Lee,  of  Fourier, 
of  Brisbane,  of  Owen,  and  the  thousand  and  one  modifications 
of  the  Agrarian  of  ancient  times,  of  the  Arcadian,  and  the 
Philansters  of  the  present. 

To  make  all  men  happy  we  must  first  make  them  unselfish, 
in  obedience  to  the  Bible  precept,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neigh- 
bor as  thyself."  But  when  that  is  done  the  world  becomes 
truly  religious,  and  nothing  more  is  needed. 

As  a  means,  then,  of  making  earth  a  paradise,  where  love 
and  intelligence  and  plenty  shall  universally  prevail,  leaving 
no  room  for  dissatisfaction,  disquietude,  for  wasting  anxieties 
and  corroding  cares,  nor  for  want  and  famine  and  disease,  we 
earnestly  commend  one  item  of  early  education  :  — 

Implant  into  the  very  nature  of  your  children,  from  earliest 
infancy,  an  affectionate  and  implicit  belief  in  all  Bible 
teachings. 


UNTIMELY  EXERCISE. 

A  BRISK  walk,  in  a  cool,  bracing  atmosphere,  is  a  luxury, 
provided  it  be  taken  under  proper  circumstances.  Sidney 
Smith  made  a  great  mistake  when  he  said  that  a  public 
speaker  would  never  break  down  if  he  would  walk  a  dozen 
miles  before  speaking.  He  might  not  break  down,  in  one 
sense  of  the  word ;  for  there  would  be  nothing  to  break. 
He  would  have  no  strength,  and  there  would  be  no  elevation 


CLERICAL  EXPOSURES.  273 

to  tumble  from,  because  his  speech  would  be  as  flat  as  cold 
soup.  The  less  a  man  exercises  before  a  morning's  sermon 
or  speech  the  better.  The  vital  energy  should  not  be  ex- 
pended on  the  muscles,  but  on  the  brain.  To  speak  with 
freshness,  and  with  a  vigor  which  shall  carry  all  before  it,  a 
man  should  neither  sing,  talk,  nor  walk  before  speaking. 


CLEKICAL  EXPOSURES. 

A  STERN  and  honorable  sense  of  duty  has  led  many  a  self- 
sacrificing  clergyman  and  physician  to  encounter  exposures 
which  have  laid  them  in  the  tomb ;  and  many  a  martyr  to 
professional  obligation  sleeps  in  his  lonely  and  forgotten 
grave. 

An  active,  talented,  and  efficient  clergyman  from  the  far 
West,  writes,  "  Three  weeks  ago  I  overdid  myself  in  walk- 
ing, caught  a  cold,  preached  with  the  cold  on  me ;  rode  out 
immediately  afterwards  to  see  a  dying  man,  took  a  fresh  cold, 
which  settled  on  my  lungs,  coughed  tremendously  for  a  few 
days,  had  asthmatic  symptoms ;  but  in  eight  or  ten  days  all 
disappeared,  and  I  think  the  lungs  are  free  from  all  disease'." 
At  the  same  time,  the  fore  part  of  the  letter  complained,  "  On 
preaching  days  I  experience  a  sensation  of  relaxation  in  throat 
and  whole  body,  doAvn  to  fingers  and  toes,  huskiness  of  voice, 
and  a  slight  soreness  about  the  hollow  at  the  bottom  of  the 
neck." 

Riding  on  horseback  immediately  after  a  public  address,  in 
damp  or  rainy  weather,  or  windy  weather,  even  in  summer 
time,  is  enough  to  fasten  a  fatal  disease  on  any  man  of  ordinary 
health.  Public  men  must  decide  for  themselves  how  far  they 
are  called  upon  to  take  risks,  with  chances  so  largely  against 
them. 

As  to  preaching  with  the  hoarseness  of  a  fresh  cold  upon 
him,  no  man  is  justifiable  under  any  circumstances  short  of 
threatened  life. 

After  speaking  in  weathers  above  named,  persons  should 
remain  in  the  house  at  least  twenty  minutes,  then  button  up, 
and  keep  the  nose  and  mouth  well  veiled. 


274  OUT-DOOR   SAFETY. 


OUT-DOOR  SAFETY. 

THE  fear  of  the  weather  has  sent  multitudes  to  the  grave, 
who  otherwise  might  have  lived  in  health  many  years  longer. 
The  fierce  north  wind  and  the  furious  snow-storm  kill  com- 
paratively few,  while  hot  winter  rooms  and  crisping  summer 
suns  have  countless  hecatombs  of  human  victims  to  attest  their 
power.  Except  in  localities  where  malignant  miasms  prevail, 
and  that  only  in  warm  weather,  out-door  life  is  the  healthiest 
and  happiest,  from  the  tropics  to  the  poles. 

The  general  fact  speaks  for  itself,  that  persons  who  are  out 
of  doors  most,  take  cold  least.  In  some  parts  of  our  country, 
near  one  half  of  the  adult  deaths  are  from  diseases  of  the  air 
passages.  These  ailments  arise  from  taking  cold  in  some  way 
or  another ;  and  surely  the  reader  will  take  some  interest  in  a 
subject,  which,  by  at  least  one  chance  out  of  four,  his  own  life 
may  be  lost. 

All  colds  arise  from  one  of  two  causes. 

1.  By  getting  cool  too  quick  after  exercise,  either  as  to  the 
whole  body,  or  any  part  of  it. 

2.  By  being  chilled,  and  remaining  so  for  a  long  time,  from 
want  of  exercise. 

To  avoid  colds  from  the  former,  we  have  only  to  go  to  a 
fire  the  moment  the  exercises  cease  in  the  winter.  If  in  sum- 
mer, repair  at  once  to  a  closed  room,  and  there  remain  with 
the  same  clothing  on,  until  cooled  off. 

To  avoid  colds  from  the  latter  cause,  and  these  engender 
the  most  speedily  fatal  diseases,  such  as  pleurisies,  croup,  and 
inflammation  of  the  lungs,  called  pneumonias,  we  have  only  to 
compel  ourselves  to  walk  with  sufficient  vigor  to  keep  off  a 
feeling  of  chilliness.  Attention  to  a  precept  contained  in  less 
than  a  dozen  words,  would  add  twenty  years  to  the  average  of 
civilized  life. 

Keep  away  chilliness  by  exercise;  cool  off  slowly.  Then  you 
will  never  take  cold,  in  door  or  out. 


TOBACCO  AND  LIQUOR.  275 


TOBACCO  AND  LIQUOR. 

THOSE  who  revel  in  these  luxuries  have  an  interesting  time 
in  prospect.  It  is  stated,  that  in  order  to  give  an  almond 
flavor  to  tobacco,  the  manufacturers  are  beginning  to  use 
prussic  acid  —  a  few  drops  of  which  on  a  man's  tongue  will 
produce  death  in  five  minutes.  Several  persons  are  alleged  to 
have  lost  the  use  of  their  lower  limbs  by  smoking  cigars  thus 
flavored. 

A  government  inspector  states,  that  of  several  hundred  lots 
of  liquor  examined,  nine  tenths  were  imitations,  and  that  a 
great  portion  of  them  were  poisonous  concoctions.  Not  one 
gallon  of  brandy  in  a  hundred  is  pure ;  and  as  to  the  wines, 
not  one  in  a  thousand  :  that  chemical  analysis  shows  them  to 
be  made  of  water,  alum,  pepper,  horse-radish,  and  oil  of 
vitriol ;  and  that  some  of  the  whiskey  had  enough  of  sulphuric 
acid  in  a  quart  to  eat  a  hole  in  a  man's  stomach. 

The  council  of  state  of  Berne,  Switzerland,  in  consequence 
of  the  deleterious  effects  of  tobacco  on  the  human  frame,  have 
recently  determined  to  prohibit  the  use  of  it  to  all  "  uncon- 
firmed "  young  men :  this  religious  rite  is  there  administered 
at  sixteen. 

A  highly  esteemed  Presbyterian  clergyman,  in  Virginia, 
recently  committed  suicide,  from  a  state  of  nervous  irritation 
caused  by  the  excessive  use  of  tobacco. 

An  instructive  and  alarming  fact  may  be  here  stated,  in 
reference  to  the  Wall  Street  forger,  recently  sent  to  the 
penitentiary.  It  was  proven  on  the  trial,  that  he  was  never 
seen  down  town  without  having  a  cigar  in  his  mouth ;  that 
he  was  never  well.  On  entering  the  prison,  smoking  was 
absolutely  and  at  once  prohibited,  by  an  inflexible  rule.  In 
three  months  he  gained  fifteen  pounds  in  flesh,  and  his  general 
health  was  improved  in  proportion.  This  showed  the  value 
of  the  expression,  "  I  can't  do  it,"  so  readily  used  by  slaves  to 
the  habit.  No  man  who  is  a  man  will  use  that  phrase  in 
reference  to  any  bodily  habit.  He  who  does  it  utters  an  un- 
qualified untruth,  and  should  be  ashamed  of  himself,  not  only 
for  his  want  of  courage,  but  for  his  want  of  morality. 

A  large  quantity  of  snuff  was  found  lodged  in  the  nasal  cav- 


276  SCHOOL   CHILDREN. 

ities  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Cooper,  of  Boston,  who  was  an 
inveterate  snuff-taker,  and  died  of  a  disorder  of  the  head 
induced  by  the  pernicious  habit. 

General  Sullivan,  of  the  Revolutionary  army,  carried  his 
snuff  loose  in  his  vest  pocket.  "  At  times,"  says  the  Medical 
World,  "  he  had  violent  pains  in  the  head ;  the  intervals  grew 
shorter,  and  the  returns  more  distressing,  ending  in  palsy, 
which  rendered  him  helpless  and  miserable,  and  put  him  in 
his  grave  before  he  was  fifty  years  old."  The  earlier  in  life, 
and  the  earlier  in  the  day  tobacco  is  used,  the  more  pernicious 
is  its  effect  on  the  constitution. 


SCHOOL  CHILDREN. 

MANY  a  child,  the  light  of  the  house  to-day,  will  have  been 
laid  in  the  grave  before  the  winter  is  ended,  by  inattention  as 
to  heat  and  cold,  inducing  pleurisies,  inflammation  of  the  lungs, 
colds,  croups,  and  other  dangerous  maladies. 

Teachers  should  be  spoken  to  about  allowing  the  children  to 
sit  with  the  back  near  a  stove,  or  register,  or  window,  or  in 
any  position  where  the  child  is  exposed  to  a  draught  of  air,  or 
to  over-heat. 

The  children  should  not  be  allowed  to  come  directly  to  a^ 
tire,  or  stove,  on  entering  the  school-room. 

In  addition,  they  should  be  detained  in  an  outer  room  fifteen 
or  twenty  degrees  colder,  for  a  few  minutes  after  the  school  is 
dismissed,  and  then  have  their  gloves  put  on,  and  a  veil  put 
over  the  face  and  fastened,  so  as  not  to  be  blown  aside.  The 
colder  the  weather,  and  the  higher  the  wind,  the  more  neces- 
sary are  these  precautions,  not  only  in  leaving  the  school- 
room, but  on  leaving  home. 

The  grateful  relief  which  is  experienced  when  facing  a  fierce 
cold  wind,  on  putting  a  silk  handkerchief  over  the  face,  will 
surprise  any  one  who  tries  it. 

All  India-rubber  shoes  or  garments  should  be  removed  the 
moment  on  coming  in-doors. 

Children  should  be  instructed  to  run  with  the  mouth  shut 
for  the  first  block  or  two  after  getting  out  of  doors  in  cold 
weather. 


HEALTH  OF  EMPLOYMENTS.  277 


HEALTH  OF  EMPLOYMENTS. 

THE  following  instructive  table  was  prepared  by  direction 
of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  by  which  it  appears  that  the 
average  age  of 

Years. 

Gentlemen,  is          ......     68 

Judges, 65 

Farmers,         .......     64 

Bank  Officers,         ......     64 

Coopers, 58 

Public  Officers, 57 

Clergymen,     .         .         .         .         .         .         .56 

Shipwrights,  .         .         .         .         .         .         .55 

Hatters,  .......     54 

Lawyers,         .......     54 

Ropemakers,  .......     54 

Blacksmiths,  .         .         .         .         .         .         .51 

Merchants,     .......     51 

Calico  Printers,       .         .         .         .          .         .51 

Physicians,     .         .         .         .         .         .         .51 

Butchers,         .         .         .         .         .         .         .     50 

Carpenters,     .......     49 

Masons,          .  .         .         .         .         .48 

Traders,          .......     46 

Tailors, ........     44 

Jewellers,       .......     44 

Manufacturers,        .         .         .         .         .         .43 

Bakers,  .         .         .         ...         .         .         .43 

Painters,         .......     43 

Shoemakers,  .         .         . ,  .         .         .43 

Mechanics,      .......     43 

Editors,          .         .         .         .         .         .         .40 

Musicians,       .......     39 

Printers,         .......     38 

Machinists,     .         .         .         .         .         .         .36 

Teachers,        .......     34 

Clerks, .         .         .34 

Operatives,     .         .         .         .         .         .         .32 

Agriculturists,         .         .         .         .         .         .64 


278  HEALTH  OF  EMPLOYMENTS. 

The  most  striking  discrepancy  in  the  above  table  is  between 
the  lifetime  of  a  "gentleman"  —  that  is,  one  who  lives  on  his 
income  —  and  a  common  laborer,  who  lives,  in  an  expressive 
vulgarism,  "  from  hand  to  mouth  "  —  who  lives  upon  the  pro- 
ceeds of  each  day's  work.  A  "  gentleman,"  with  his  sur- 
roundings, lives  more  than  twice  as  long  as  the  man,  who,  if 
he  does  not  find  work  to-day,  must  go  without  food,  or  go  in 
debt  to-morrow.  A  like  result  has  been  noticed  in  the  report 
of  M.  Villerme,  in  France,  where  the  average  age  of  a  thou- 
sand "prosperous"  persons  was  forty-two  years,  while  the 
average  age  of  twenty  thousand  "  poor "  persons  was  twenty 
years  —  less  than  one  half !  about  the  same  as  in  Massa- 
chusetts ;  showing,  that  in  states,  climes,  and  continents,  as 
wide  asunder  in  locality  as  in  their  civil  politics,  the  same 
great  general  principles  prevail  in  reference  to  the  human 
body  and  mind,  to  wit,  that  a  mind  at  ease  gives  long  life  to 
the  body.  On  the  same  principles  is  it,  that  pensioned  people 
and  paupers,  who  feel  that  they  are  provided  for,  so  often  live 
to  a  good  old  age. 

Next  to  the  "gentleman  "  comes  the  salaried  man,  judges, 
justices,  bank  officers,  and  public  officers,  who  can  go  to  bed 
any  night  with  the  quiet  assurance  that  they  will  not  wake  up 
paupers  in  the  morning ;  that  whatever  betides,  their  salaries 
go  on.  In  sad  contrast  with  this  are  printers,  machinists, 
clerks,  and  teachers,  whose  bread  stops  with  their  daily  labor, 
or  depends  on  the  caprice  of  another.  The  broad  fact  thus 
comes  out,  that  between  dependence  and  independence  there 
is  literally  an  age,  a  lifetime,  or,  in  Wall  Street  language,  a 
difference  of  one  hundred  per  cent.  :  the  difference  in  despotic 
France  of  twenty  and  forty-two ;  in  democratic  America,  of 
thirty-two  and  sixty-eight ;  and  let  the  weekly  mortuary  tables 
of  New  York  reiterate  the  same  lesson,  when  they  show  us 
that  of  the  multitudes  who  are  daily  striving  for  bread,  one 
out  of  every  six  dies  from  a  disease  of  the  brain  or  nerves ; 
showing,  that  the  next  great  destroyer  to  remorseless  con- 
sumption is  worldly  care!  —  the  greed  of  gold  —  the  strife  for 
bread ! 

For  these  things,  the  Bible  at  once  presents  a  rational,  a 
speedy,  a  certain  remedy,  and  withal  practicable,  when  it 
warns  us  against  hasting  to  be  rich;  counselling  us  to  be 
moderate  in  our  ambition,  and  to  be  "  temperate  in  all  things." 


NURSING.  279 


NURSING. 

A  GOOD  nurse  is  better  than  physic.  That  nurse  should  be 
a  woman ;  her  soft  hand,  her  soothing  voice,  her  sympathetic 
nature,  her  capabilities  of  endurance,  her  alertness,  her  tidi- 
ness and  scrupulous  cleanliness,  make  her  incalculably  better 
adapted  for  attending  on  the  sick  than  man  possibly  can  be. 
Many  a  valuable  life  would  be  saved  if  nursing  could  be 
made  a  "  calling  "  for  women ;  if  they  should  be  regularly 
instructed  in  the  performance  of  duties  of  that  character. 
If  we  were  ill  of  any  disease  known  to  man,  especially  scar- 
let fever  and  small-pox,  we  would  rather  take  our  chance  for 
life  with  a  good  woman  nurse  than  any  apothecary  shop. 

Let  us  give  an  illustration,  which  will  impress  the  truth  on 
the  mind  indelibly,  that  it  is  a  greater  calamity  in  sickness  to 
be  without  a  good  nurse  than  to  be  without  a  doctor.  That 
human  angel,  Florence  Nightingale,  says,  that  during  the  first 
six  months  of  the  Crimean  campaign,  the  deaths  among  the 
soldiers  were  at  the  rate  of  sixty  out  of  a  hundred  per  an- 
num; during  the  last  six  months,  with  the  same  physicians, 
the  mortality  among  the  sick  was  only  two  thirds  of  what  it 
was  among  the  healthy  soldiers  in  England.  This  great 
change  arose  from  improvements  carried  out  by  the  Sanitary 
Commissioners  in  reference  to  the  care  of  the  sick  and  their 
surroundings. 

Sixty  persons  dying  out  of  a  hundred,  in  a  year,  is  worse 
than  the  great  plague  in  London,  worse  than  the  terrible  rav- 
ages of  cholera. 

Ordinarily,  only  twenty-one  persons  out  of  every  thousand 
die  in  a  year.  It  may  be  instructive  to  know  what  were  some 
of  the  circumstances,  the  removal  of  which  makes  such  a 
remarkable  change.  Each  patient  had  only  one  fourth  of  the 
room  necessary ;  the  windows  were  not  hoisted  so  as  to  admit 
fresh  air ;  the  ground  about  the  buildings  was  always  wet,  for 
want  of  draining ;  dead  animals  lay  around  on  the  ground 
for  several  weeks ;  the  floors  were  incrusted  with  dirt,  and 
could  not  be  washed,  for  the  necessary  scrubbing  caused  the 
rotten  planks  to  crumble  ;  the  walls  and  ceilings  were  satu- 


280  HAIR  DYES. 

rated  with  decomposing  matters ;  rats  and  vermin  swarmed 
everywhere,  and  to  exhibit  the  want  of  furniture,  utensils, 
<fec. ,  a  common  bottle  was  used  as  a  candlestick. 

Not  much  better,  according  to  a  correspondent  of  the  Boston 
Medical  Surgical  Journal,  was  the  condition  of  things  in 
the  building  where  originated  the  disease  which  destroyed  so 
many  people  : —  a  water-closet  under  the  same  roof  was  so  full 
that  the  filth  came  up  through  the  cracks  of  the  floor  when  he 
stepped  on  it ;  and  other  things  to  match. 

Physic  has  power,  sometimes,  almost  miraculous  ;  but  it  is 
shorn  of  its  locks,  and  is  weak  as  an  infant,  when  it  has  to 
contend  against  dirt,  dampness,  and  the  want  of  fresh  and 
pure  air ;  nor  can  the  best  nurses  in  the  world  do  better  under 
the  circumstances.  Let  everything  about  the  sick  be  per- 
fectly dry  and  scrupulously  clean,  with  an  orderly  arrange- 
ment of  everything  about  the  bed  and  room ;  be  quiet  in 
movement,  cheerful  in  countenance,  prompt  in  action,  with 
a  plenty  of  pure  air  steadily  circulating.  Have  a  large,  high 
room,  with  windows  facing  the  sun,  for  a  greater  part  of  the 
day  ;  let  the  fireplace  be  always  open ;  remove  all  bottles  and 
other  "signs"  of  physic  ;  allow  no  standing  liquids,  not  even 
pure  water ;  and  have  no  hanging  garment  about.  As  you 
love  the  invalid,  attend  to  these  things. 


HAIK  DYES. 

ONE  of  the  European  journals  relates  the  case  of  a  gentle- 
man who  became  a  maniac  in  consequence,  as  said,  of  the 
free  use  of  a  hair  dye.  We  know  of  no  efficient  hair  dye 
which  does  not  owe  its  prompt  virtues  to  a  solution  of  "  ni- 
trate of  silver,"  which  in  its  solid  state  is  known  by  the  name 
of  "  lunar  caustic  ;  "  it  stains  the  skin  black  by  burning  it, 
and  will  burn  into  the  flesh,  if  steadily  applied.  A  hot  iron 
will  sear  the  skin,  and  render  it  hard,  callous,  unfeeling,  and 
unfit  for  natural  purposes,  preventing  that  free  evaporation 
which  is  essential  to  the  health  of  the  body.  If  this  is  done 
by  investing  a  man  with  an  India-rubber  garment,  he  will  die 
in  a  few  hours. 


,  OVER-EATING.  281 

Hair  dyes  for  whiskers  have  become  very  common  of  late 
years  ;  they  have  to  be  repeated  once  a  month  ;  their  more  im- 
mediate effect  is  to  impart  a  dead,  black  color,  which  at  once 
reveals  the  hypocrisy ;  and  that  it  should  so  disturb  the  natu- 
ral functions  of  the  skin,  by  such  frequent  application,  as  to 
lay  the  foundation  for  callosities,  cancers,  and  other  affections, 
is  at  least  to  be  apprehended.  The  employment  of  such 
cheateries  is  altogether  incompatible  with  that  feeling  of  inde- 
pendence and  self-respect  which  characterizes  an  educated 
gentleman. 


OVER-EATING. 

How  many  people  eat  to  make  it  even  ?  All  the  butter  is 
gone,  but  the  bread  is  not  quite  eaten,  so  another  piece  of 
butter  is  taken  ;  but  it  was  too  much,  and  the  bread  has  given 
out. 

How  many  a  time  has  the  reader  eaten  some  remnant  on 
his  plate,  not  because  he  wanted  it,  but  to  prevent  its  being 
wasted?  How  often  have  you  eaten  as  much  as  you  wanted, 
and  were  about  pushing  back  from  the  table,  when  very  un- 
expectedly a  new  dish,  or  splendid-looking  pudding,  dum- 
pling, or  pie  is  presented,  and  you  immediately  "  set  to,"  and 
before  you  are  done,  have  eaten  almost  as  much  in  bulk  as 
you  had  done  before? 

Many  a  time  have  you  gone  down  to  the  table,  not  only 
without  an  appetite,  but  with  almost  a  feeling  of  aversion  to 
food ;  and  yet  you  tasted  this  and  that  and  the  other,  and 
before  you  were  aware  of  it,  you  had  "  made  out "  a  consider- 
able supper ! 

All  these  practices  are  wasteful,  hurtful,  and  beastly — no, 
we  recall  that ;  we  are  doing  Mr.  Pig  an  injustice  ;  for,  like 
all  other  respectable  animals,  when  he  "is  done,"  he  "quits" 
—  a  thing  which  rational  man  seldom  does. 


282  TRUE  HOSPITALITY. 


TRUE  HOSPITALITY. 

TRUE  hospitality  is  seldom  found  except  in  country  places. 
We  sacrifice  reason,  and  health,  and  comfort,  to  pride,  pre- 
tence, and  a  vain  show.  How  hateful  to  our  ears  are  the  de- 
ceitful apologies  made  to  guests  at  the  dinner-table.  In  all 
cases  they  are  to  us  a  moral  emesis,  a  dose  of  tartar  emetic. 
How  much  lack  we  of  that  high  independence  which  should 
characterize  the  man  anywhere  —  everywhere.  We  all  know 
that  such  apologies  are  falsities  in  others ;  but  seem  to  forget 
that  others  regard  them  in  the  same  light  as  to  ourselves,  and 
the  meal  is  commenced  with  a  feeling  of  disparagement  as  to 
our  host  and  hostess,  if  not  of  actual  contempt ;  and  in  pro- 
portion to  its  intensity,  does  it  retard  digestion.  All  feelings 
at  the  dinner-table  should  be  of  the  positively  pleasurable 
kind  ;  in  proportion  as  it  is  not  SQ,  "  dining  out "  is  a  bore  and 
an  injury  to  the  body. 

To  be  truly  hospitable,  make  your  guest  feel  himself  at 
home.  Let  him  see  that  your  usual  routine  is  not  disturbed  ; 
and  in  proportion  as  he  is  conscious  of  this,  will  he  feel  free 
to  come  again,  throw  off  restraint,  and  make  himself  at 
home  ;  feel  that  he  is  welcome.  An  infallible  recipe  for  mak- 
ing a  friend's  visits  few  and  far  between  is,  to  let  him  see,  or 
plainly  tell  him,  how  much  you  are  doing  out  of  your  daily 
routine  to  make  him  comfortable.  Some  people  torture  you 
through  half  a  meal  with  details  as  to  the  worthlessness  of  their 
servants,  the  troublesomencss  of  their  children ;  or,  if  they 
have  bodily  infirmities,  they  pile  up  the  agony  to  a  most  ex- 
cruciating extent ;  and,  instead  of  dining  on  a  fine  turkey, 
you  are  dining  on  tortures.  Others  revel  in  the  details  of  the 
exploits  of  their  children,  or  in  genealogical  rehearsals,  or 
something  equally  contemptible.  We  once  heard  a  profes- 
sional gentleman  at  his  table  say  that  he  "  never  did  a  stroke 
of  work  in  his  life."  We  looked  about  his  house,  and  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  his  wife  and  servants  could  pretty  near 
say  the  same  thing.  On  leaving  him,  we  saw  the  well  hard 
by  ;  and  the  sum  total  of  conveniences  for  getting  water  for 
the  supply  of  the  whole  family  was  — a  rope,  one  end  of  which 


TRUE  HOSPITALITY.  283 

was  tied  to  a  tree,  the  other  to  a  tin  pan.  A  lady  once  told 
us  at  a  dinner-table,  with  apparent  pride,  that  she  had  not  a 
poor  blood-relation  in  the  world,  until  the  last  generation, 
which  found  them  and  herself  in  proximity  to  the  little  end 
of  nothing  —  sharpened.  Let  your  guests  see  and  feel  that 
in  all  you  do  or  think  or  say,  there  is  truth,  earnestness, 
good-will  and  courtesy.  Let  the  aim  be  not  merely  to  spread 
the  table  with  luxuries,  with  things  early  and  rare,  but  let  the 
surroundings  be  abundant  in  smiles,  in  kind-heartedness,  in 
high-bred  courtesies,  in  genial  humor,  in  conversation  on  sub- 
jects not  only  pleasurable  in  themselves,  but  in  their  sugges- 
tions, and  let  everything  "  go  off"  with  that  unselfish  abandon, 
with  that  careless  good-nature,  that  decorous  unreserve,  which 
throw  around  both  guest  and  host  the  delightful  atmosphere 
of  home. 

If  people  in  the  city  could  thus  visit  one  another,  and  allow 
their  '  country "  cousins  and  acquaintances  to  visit  them,  an 
incalculable  benefit  would  redound  to  the  physical  man  ;  most 
especially  would  it  have  a  healthful  effect  on  the  minds  and 
bodies,  and  tempers  of  our  wives  and  daughters,  by  that 
change  of  food  and  air,  and  subject  of  thought  and  feeling 
and  conversation,  which  is  essentially  necessary  to  our  well- 
being.  Were  dinner  and  tea  thus  taken  from  home  two  or 
three  times  a  week,  by  every  woman  in  cities,  old  and 
young,  it  would  not  only  add  to  the  bodily  and  mental  health 
of  the  individual,  but  society  would  be  benefited  by  that 
warming  up  of  our  sympathies,  our  humanities,  and  that  gen- 
eral kindliness  of  heart  which  such  associations  engender,  and 
which  so  elevate  our  nature.  We  are  social  beings;  "mau 
was  not  made  to  be  alone."  There  is  a  yearning  in  all  hearts 
for  company,  for  congenial  associates  ;  and  by  its  wise  indul- 
gence, men  promote  manliness,  and  women  cultivate  those 
charms  of  character  which  make  them  on  earth  our  guardian 
angels. 


284  THE  POOR  MAN'S  BOOK. 


THE  POOR  MAN'S  BOOK. 

A  FEW  Sundays  ago  we  heard  from  our  minister  the  ex- 
pression, "  The  Bible  is  emphatically  the  poor  man's  book  ;  " 
and  on  reflection  it  occurred  to  us  that  it  was  a  most  truthful 
sentiment.  One  of  the  very  last  recorded  warnings  in  the 
Old  Testament  dispensation  is  directed  to  "those  that  op- 
press the  hireling  in  his  wages,  the  widow  and  the  fatherless." 
What  could  be  more  beneficent  in  its  aims  for  the  daily  labor- 
er, than  the  imperative  injunction  of  Moses,  "  The  wages  of 
him  that  is  hired  shall  not  abide  with  thee  all  night,  until  the 
morning."  What  multitudes  of  hearts  of  the  poor,  in  a  great 
city  like  this,  sink  within  them,  when,  applying  for  their 
wages,  they  are  told  to  wait  a  few  days,  or  even  until  to-mor- 
row ;  that  it  is  not  "  convenient "  now.  Nor  is  it  convenient, 
reader,  for  that  sick  child  at  home  to  wait  a  day  or  two  for 
medicine ;  nor  for  a  hungry  family,  without  credit,  to  wait 
until  to-morrow  for  this  day's  bread; — cold  and  sleet,  and 
sun  and  storm,  never  wait.  The  authoritative  expression  to 
laborers,  "  You  must  wait  a  day  or  two,"  is  equivalent  to,  in 
cases  not  a  few,  "  For  a  day  or  two  you  must  abide  in  hunger 
and  cold."  How  soothingly  to  the  poor  in  this  world's  goods, 
who  make  the  Bible  "  their  "  book,  is  the  assurance  that  its 
great  Hero  "  had  not  a  place  to  lay  his  head  ;  "  that  he  could 
be  touched  with  the  feelings  of  their  infirmities,  having  been 
tempted  in  all  points  as  they  were  !  And  as  to  the  physical 
well-being  of  the  poor,  nothing  could  be  more  to  the  purpose 
than  the  numerous  injunctions  in  the  Scriptures  —  injunctions 
of  the  most  specific  character  as  to  cleanliness,  as  to  moder- 
ation, as  to  temperance,  as  to  the  restraint  of  evil  passions 
and  propensities,  and  as  to  the  cultivation  of  the  finer  feelings 
of  our  nature  — purity  of  body,  purity  of  mind. 

Anxiety  and  privation  and  want  hurry  multitudes  of 
poor  every  year  to  a  premature  grave.  But  thrift  and  Bible 
religion  go  together  the  world  over;  and  its  principles,  pure, 
and  unadulterated  by  human  traditions  and  human  exposi- 
tions and  commentaries,  are  the  only  panacea  for  the  cure  of 
disease  and  want  and  crime ;  hence  it  is  not  at  all  out  of  the 


FAMILY  ORDER.  285 

way  in  a  "  Journal  of  Health  "  to  draw  attention  to  a  book 
which  so  largely  inculcates  attention  to  the  three  great  founda- 
tions of  human  health  and  physical  well-being — Cleanliness, 
Temperance,  and  Industry. 


FAMILY  ORDER. 

WHAT  a  delightful  thing  it  is  to  know,  that  from  cellar  to 
garret,  there  is  not  a  hiding-place  for  the  smallest  piece  of 
dust,  or  dirt,  or  rubbish ;  that  everything  about  you  is  in  a 
cleanly  condition  ;  that  every  piece  of  clothing  is  in  its  usual 
and  proper  place  ;  that  of  the  multitudinous  articles  of  domestic 
convenience  and  necessity,  there  is  not  one  which  is  unfit  for 
immediate  use,  not  one  that  could  not  have  hands  laid  on  it  at 
any  hour  of  the  day  or  night ;  to  have  children  and  domestics 
so  well  drilled,  that  none  of  them  will  fail,  in  a  month,  to  put 
a  thing  in  its  proper  place  the  moment  it  ceases  to  be  used ; 
to  have  all  know  that  doors  are  to  be  closed  behind  them  ;  that 
the  feet  are  to  be  well  wiped  on  the  door-mat ;  that  nothing  is 
to  be  stepped  over ;  that  any  unsightly  thing  is  to  be  removed 
by  the  first  discoverer,  by  whatever  accident  placed  there ; 
that  every  garment  be  left  at  night  at  the  same  spot,  and 
arranged  in  such  a  way,  that  the  first  one  touched  is  the  first 
to  be  put  on ;  that  no  one  is  to  be  called  twice  to  either  meal 
or  to  get  up  in  the  morning ;  that  each  one  study  to  spare  labor 
to  another,  soiling  as  few  garments  as  is  compatible  with  fault- 
less cleanliness  ;  to  be  willing  to  incommode  one's  self,  rather 
than  impose  unnecessary  labor  on  cook,  laundress,  nurse, 
seamstress,  or  housemaid ;  that  children  be  self-denying  as  to 
one  another,  loving  as  to  parents,  deferential  as  to  guests,  and 
courteous  towards  servants  !  To  have  these  things  requires  a 
wife  who  is  orderly,  systematic,  and  industrious.  It  requires 
a  great  deal  of  patience  to  develop  them  in  children  and 
hirelings.  Yet  it  can  be  done,  for  there  is  a  house  of  that  sort 
opposite  our  ofiice  window,  and  there  is  another  of  the  same 
kind  opposite  that  house.  Notable  wives  are  they,  worthy  of 
a  long  hunt,  and  rich  without  a  dollar.  It  is  true,  that  in 
cases  of  the  kind  which  have  come  under  our  notice,  there  is 


286  FAMILY  ORDER. 

rather  a  preponderance  of  capsicum,  a  mite  more  than  is  com- 
patible with  perfect  felicity  ;  but  even  gold  has  some  alloy. 

What  a  terrible  life  must  that  unfortunate  husband  lead, 
whose  M  partner  "  is  so  affectionate  and  amiable  that  she  can- 
not bear  to  be  cross,  or  to  reprove  anybody  about  her  ;  who  is 
willing  to  let  all  have  their  own  way ;  who  never  can  see  the 
use  of  having  everything  "just  so  ; "  who  can  never  tell  where 
anything  is ;  whose  practice  is  to  fit  for  use  when  wanted,  on 
the  ground  that  if  it  is  never  wanted,  there  is  so  much  labor 
saved ;  who  never  lays  a  garment  away  smoothly,  because  if  it 
has  forty  thousand  wrinkles  in  it,  it  can't  be  stiff,  and  is  there- 
fore more  pliable ;  who  believes  that  much  exercise  is  danger- 
ous, and  prevents  that  rotundity  and  fulness  of  muscle,  of 
cheek  and  limb,  which  all  admire  ;  who  is  satisfied  in  her  own 
•mind,  that  if  everything  is  allowed  to  take  care  of  itself,  there 
will  be  no  need  of  her  taking  care  of  it,  unnecessary  labor 
being  a  clear  loss ;  who  does  not  believe  in  "  shams,"  there- 
fore will  not  have  the  ceilings  whitewashed  every  spring, 
because  whitewash  only  covers  up  the  blackness  under  it ;  who 
says  it  is  wasteful  to  sweep  a  carpet,  because  it  wears  it  out, 
and  if  let  alone,  the  dirt  will  hide  itself  "  underneath  ;  "  who 
has  always  been  under  the  impression  that  dampness  in  a 
dwelling  is  unhealthful,  and  therefore  never  has  the  stairs  or 
floors  scrubbed ;  who  avers  the  uselessness  of  having  the 
painted  wood-work  washed,  as  it  takes  off  the  paint,  and  if  it 
was  not  intended  that  the  paint  should  remain  there,  it  should 
not  have  been  put  on  ;  who  never  sews  on  a  button  for  her 
husband,  because,  if  he  has  to  sew  them  on  himself,  he  will 
be  more  careful  not  to  twist  them  off;  who  does  not  employ  a 
seamstress,  because  it  is  expensive,  then  sits  and  sews  from 
morning  till  night,  until  she  is  laid  up  for  want  of  exercise, 
then  must  have  an  extra  servant  for  a  nurse,  which,  with 
the  doctor's  bill,  would  pay  a  seamstress  for  a  3rear's  work; 
who  sews  until  midnight,  because  in  the  morning  she  always 
feels  sleep}-,  and  it  takes  until  breakfast-time  to  get  her  sleep 
out ;  who  spends  half  her  time  in  showing  the  housemaid  how 
to  do  things,  Biddy  looking  on  with  great  soberness  (as  she 
used  to  do  in  her  "  last  place,"  and  will  do  again),  because  it 
is  a  fine  thing  for  the  mistress  to  earn  the  wages  of  the  maid ; 
who  don't  like  to  go  down  into  the  kitchen  to  "  look  after 


FAMILY  ORDER.  287 

things,"  because  it  looks  close  and  mean  to  the  servants ;  who 
hates  to  lock  up  things,  because  it  is  unfeeling  to  let  the 
"  help "  see  that  you  are  suspicious,  when  you  have  no 
evidence  that  they  are  dishonest ;  that  it  is  no  use  to  be  so 
saving  of  food  and  fuel,  for  then  scavengers  and  beggars 
would  have  no  encouragement  to  go  around  and  get  an  honest 
living  ;  who  will  at  times  exert  themselves  beyond  their  ability, 
because  there  is  work  to  be  done,  and  they  can't  help  it ;  if 
they  are  made  sick  by  it,  somebody  must  be  sick,  or  the  doc- 
tors would  starve  ;  who  will  tease  their  husbands  for  this,  that, 
or  the  other  coveted  item,  because  such  and  such  a  one  has 
just  bought  one.  "  But  they  live  on  their  income,  and  we  are 
in  moderate  circumstances."  "I  don't  believe  in  denying  our- 
selves for  the  sake  of  our  children ;  let  them  tug  and  toil  for 
themselves."  Such  is  the  line  of  argument  in  many  house- 
holds, the  result,  iu  too  many  cases,  being  the  destruction  of 
family  peace,  comfort,  and  enjoyment;  it  is  thus  that  many  an 
ambitious,  economical,  and  industrious  young  husband  has  been 
discouraged  into  idle  habits,  or  driven  to  spend  his  "  evenings 
out "  in  societies,  clubs,  bar-rooms,  and  brothels,  to  end  iu  a 
drunkard's  death,  a  family  unprovided  for,  in  a  long  widow- 
hood of  toil,  and  penury,  and  want,  bringing  to  mother  and 
children  that  crushing  out  of  all  life's  hopes,  which  is  the  cer- 
tain precursor  of  wasting  disease  and  premature  death. 

Let  mothers,  therefore,  as  the  best  means  of  saving  their 
daughters  from  wreck  and  ruin,  make  it  their  daily  care  to 
bring  them  up  in  such  a  manner,  that  when  they  enter  practi- 
cal life,  they  may  be  able  to  perform  well  the  responsible 
duties  of  wife,  mother,  matron.  Such  a  mother  honors  her- 
self, lays  a  broad  foundation  for  the  happiness  of  her  chil- 
dren and  her  children's  children,  and  is  one  of  society's  best 
benefactors. 

Jn  view  of  these  facts,  we  earnestly  advise  young  men  to  let 
the  character  of  the  mother  have  a  large  influence  in  determin- 
ing their  choice  of  a  wife  ;  a  choice  which  makes  or  mars  the  lot 
of  life,  and  often  moulds  the  destiny  beyond.  With  a  good 
wife,  a  man  may  be  comparatively  happy  under  all  circum- 
stances j  without  one,  he  cannot  be  happy  in  any. 


288  HUMAN  GROWTH. 


HUMAN   GROWTH. 

FROM  the  mechanism  of  a  mite  to  that  of  a  mail,  there  are 
inherent  evidences  of  the  same  great  Creating  Mind  —  great 
in  Wisdom,  great  in  Power,  and  great  in  his  Beneficence. 
Trees  grow  most  in  summer-time,  and  so  do  men.  In  summer 
there  is  warmth,  relaxation,  opening,  budding  out  —  there  is 
growth ;  in  winter  there  is  the  struggle  for  life  —  the  great 
manufactories  of  the  system  have  to  do  increased  work,  in 
order  to  keep  the  body  warm.  It  is  often  so  cold  in  winter, 
that  most  of  a  farmer's  time,  during  the  day,  is  expended  in 
keeping  up  the  fires.  It  is  the  same  in  the  human  body  : 
extra  labor  must  be  done  by  the  multitudinous  workmen, 
whose  business  it  is  to  keep  the  wheels  of  life  in  motion.  In 
winter  we  eat  a  fourth  more,  and  require  more  sleep,  by  a 
full  hour,  in  the  twenty-four.  So  that  he  who  is  so  systematic 
as  to  go  to  bed  at  the  same  hour,  and  leave  it  the  same  hour, 
the  year  round,  does  a  violence  to  his  constitution,  which  will 
tell  undeniably  in  the  direction  of  debility  and  premature 
decay. 

The  "  stripling "  and  the  "  sapling  "  spread  out  luxuriant- 
ly ;  but  as  the  time  of  the  "  sear  and  yellow  leaf"  comes  on, 
their  growth  becomes  more  and  more  feeble,  then  ceases,  and 
they  die  !  The  hair  grows  fastest  in  the  summer,  and  in  the 
young.  A  finger  nail  is  renewed  in  a  hundred  and  thirty-two 
days  in  winter,  but  requires  only  a  hundred  and  sixteen  of 
warm  weather.  And  as  light  hastens  vegetation,  so  it  is 
known  that  the  hair  grows  faster  in  the  daytime  than  in  the 
night ;  and  the  beautiful  principle  holds  good  as  to  our  moral 
being.  We  all  expand  and  grow  in  the  likeness  of  our  Great 
Father  in  proportion  as  charity  keeps  up  the  warm  summer 
time  in  our  hearts ;  while  the  sunlight  of  a  life  that  is  pure 
and  true  dispels  the  clouds  and  darkness  of  wrong-doing,  and 
creates  an  atmosphere  fit  for  the  breath  of  angels. 


POISONOUS  MILK.  289 


POISONOUS    MILK. 

ACTION  is  the  universal  law  of  animal  life.  There  is  not  a 
living  thing,  whether  insect,  or  bird,  or  beast,  that  will  not 
pine  and  fall  away  and  perish  under  bodily  restraint.  Man 
himself  is  no  exception  to  the  world-wide  ordinance.  The 
flesh  of  no  pent-up  fowl  or  brute  ought  to  be  eaten,  because 
it  is  diseased  flesh.  No  wonder  that  gormands  luxuriate  on 
w  wild  flesh ; "  the  meat  is  not  only  more  tender  and  sweet 
and  juicy,  but  it  is  healthy  flesh. 

Many  families  are  considered  fortunate  who  can  afford  to 
keep  a  cow  in  cities  and  large  towns.  But,  however  various 
may  be  their  food,  and  abundant,  and  however  clean  their 
stalls,  they  inevitably  become  diseased,  and  within  a  very 
short  time,  too,  unless  they  can  walk  about  in  the  open  air, 
and  crop  something  from  the  surface  of  the  earth.  Hence 
the  milk  of  stabled  cows  becomes  putrid  much  sooner  than 
that  of  a  pastured  animal ;  for  the  microscope  discovers  minute 
globules  of  corrupted  matter  floating  through  this  stabled 
milk.  Just  imagine,  reader,  a  few  drops  of  the  yellow  mat- 
ter of  a  sore  stirred  in  among  the  milk,  which,  from  silver 
pitchers,  you  pour  into  your  morning  coffee  ! 

The  reason  of  this  is,  a  confined  cow  gets  little  or  no  lime 
from  the  food  which  she  eats.  This  lime  she  gets  from  the 
green  grass  itself,  and  an  additional  quantity  in  the  shape  of 
dust,  which  settles  on  the  grass,  or  sticks  to  some  of  the  roots 
of  the  grass,  which  sometimes  are  pulled  up  in  her  browsings. 
If,  therefore,  a  cow  must  be  stabled,  a  handful  of  bone-dust 
should  be  mixed  with  her  food  every  day.  A  cow  will  very 
soon  become  consumptive  if  closely  confined ;  and  infants 
might  as  well  use  the  milk  of  diseased  mothers  as  that  of 
diseased  cows. 

These  are  facts  about  which,  we  presume,  there  can  be  no 
dispute  ;  and  we  consider  ourself  as  the  author  of  a  benefac- 
tion to  any  family  whom  we  can  induce  to  use  the  Condensed 
Milk,  which  is  nothing  more  than  milk  deprived  of  a  great 
part  of  its  water,  and  left  thicker  than  the  thickest  cream. 

As  it  leaves  no  sediment,  it  is  proof,  so  far,  that  it  is  pure. 


290  POISONOUS  MILK. 

Two  teaspoonfuls  of  it  whiten  a  cup  of  tea  or  coffee  as  much 
as  half  a  cupful  of  boiled  milk,  thus  saving  a  family  that 
troublesome  process. 

Another  advantage  is,  it  will  remain  perfectly  good  for 
weeks,  in  summer  time,  if  kept  in  an  ice-chest ;  and  as  long 
in  winter,  if  kept  in  a  dry,  airy  place,  not  cold  enough  to 
freeze.  Thus,  by  taking  it  once  a  week,  the  daily  noise  of 
milkmen,  and  the  trouble  of  attending  to  them,  is  wholly  got 
rid  of;  and,  being  brought  from  the  interior  of  New  England, 
where  there  are  no  distilleries  to  slop-feed  the  cows,  but 
where  it  is  known  to  be  a  farming  neighborhood,  there  is 
every  guarantee  that  we  are  using  the  milk  of  farm-house 
cows.  It  is  afforded  now  at  rather  a  less  cost  than  common 
city  milk.  The  only  imposition  to  which  we  are  liable  is  in 
the  thickness  of  this  milk ;  and  we  hope  the  proprietors  will, 
in  time,  sell  it  by  weight.  Now  an  honest  pint  weighs  just 
twenty-one  ounces.  Twenty  years  hence  that  weight  will  be 
a  fable,  and  will  have  dwindled  down  to  about  one  half. 

This  testimony  to  the  value  and  the  virtues  of  Condensed 
Milk  is  borne  without  the  "  knowledge  or  consent "  of  the  pro- 
prietors, but  from  the  conviction,  from  long  use  of  it,  that  it 
is  one  of  the  most  beneficent  domestic  luxuries  which  we  have 
ever  had  occasion  to  notice. 

As  a  nutriment  in  consumptive  diseases,  it  is,  in  our  esti- 
mation, more  efficient  than  cod-liver  oil ;  for  we  know  that 
consumptives  need  nutrition  above  all  other  things,  —  the 
want  of  it  is  the  thing  which  prevents  recovery.  And  two 
other  things  we  know  :  Pure  milk  is  the  only  article  in  nature 
which  has  in  it  all  the  elements  of  nutrition.  It  has  the  ele- 
ment of  heat,  of  repair,  and  of  growth;  while  cod-liver  oil 
has  only  the  calorific  element,  and  keeps  us  warm,  nothing 
more  ;  it  gives  no  enduring  strength  ;  the  patient  gets  heavier, 
but  he  gets  no  stronger,  no  more  long-winded.  It  is  wonder- 
ful that  medical  men  have  not  had  their  attention  directed  to 
this  most  important  distinction.  As  long  as  a  consumptive 
person  is  getting  no  stronger,  he  is  getting  no  better,  however 
more  favorable  'other  symptoms  may  be  growing.  Thus  it  is 
that  cod-liver  oil,  affording  only  the  elements  of  heat,  can 
never  be  a  substitute  for  milk,  which  gives  both  heat  and 
repair. 


SMALL-POX.  291 

But  are  consumptive  people  to  suppose  that,  by  drinking 
pure  milk  or  cream  abundantly,  they  are  going  to  get  well 
without  consulting  a  doctor?  The  person  who  attempts  it 
will  die  very  much  sooner ;  because  any  one  living  largely  on 
milk  will  soon  become  costive,  or  derange  his  digestion,  and 
then  strength  declines.  But  if  an  experienced  physician  can 
superintend  the  case,  to  keep  the  liver  and  bowels  in  proper 
condition,  and  will  judiciously  arrange  the  exercises  of  the 
patient,  in  a  manner  best  calculated  to  digest  a  previous  meal, 
and  create  a  vigorous  appetite  for  another,  and  do  this  for 
three  meals  a  day,  then  the  chances  for  protracting  life  in 
considerable  comfort,  or  eradicating  the  disease,  are  manifold 
greater  than  by  any  other  method  hitherto  devised. 


SMALL-POX. 

FROM  extended  and  close  observation,  the  following  general 
deductions  seem  to  be  warranted  :  — 

1.  Infantile  vaccination  is  an  almost  perfect  safeguard  until 
the  fourteenth  year. 

2.  At  the  beginning  of  fourteen  the  system  gradually  loses 
its  capability  of  resistance,  until   about  twenty-one,   when 
many  persons  become  almost  as  liable  to   small-pox  as  if 
they  had  not  been  vaccinated. 

3.  This  liability  remains  in  full  force  until  about  forty-two, 
when  the  susceptibility  begins  to  decline,  and  continues  for 
seven  years  to  grow  less  and  less,  becoming  extinct  at  about 
fifty,  the  period  of  life  when  the  general  revolution  of  the 
body  begins  to  take  place,  during  which  the  system  yields 
to  decay,  or  takes  a  new  lease  of  life  for  two  or  three  terms, 
of  seven  years  each. 

4.  The  great  practical  use  to  be  made  of  these  statements 
is :   Let  every  youth  be  re-vaccinated  on  entering  fourteen. 
Let  several  attempts  be  made,  so  as  to  be  certain  of  safety. 
As  the  malady  is  more  liable  to  prevail  in  cities  during  winter, 
special  attention  is  invited  to  the  subject  at  this  time. 


292  SLEEP  DELICIOUS. 


SLEEP    DELICIOUS. 

WHAT  person  of  mature  years  can  look  on  a  sleeping  child, 
and  not  envy  the  unconscious  luxury  of  that  undisturbed  re- 
pose, especially  if  it  is  one's  own  child.  It  is  none  other  than 
a  pure  delight  to  the  parental  beholder. 

A  lady  correspondent  writes,  "From  utter  exhaustion,  I 
slept  all  night  like  an  infant.  How  ineffably  soothing  and 
refreshing  was  that  sleep,  three  nights  since  !  This  power 
of  resting,  even  for  one  brief  night,  encouraged  me  greatly. 
I  feel,  even  now,  wasted  as  I  am,  if  I  could  only  have  refresh- 
ing sleep,  if  I  could  rest,  I  could  get  well." 

The  excellent  writer  was  suffering  from  no  specially  dan- 
gerous or  critical  malady,  but  from  a  general  derangement 
of  the  whole  nervous  system.  The  incident  is  recorded  for 
the  purpose  of  bringing  to  the  reader's  mind  the  duty  of 
habitual  thankfulness  for  any  ability  he  may  have  to  go  to 
bed,  to  fall  asleep  within  ten  minutes,  and  know  nothing 
more  until  the  gray  morning  breaks.  A  deep  and  warm 
gratitude  should  well  up  constantly  from  a  loving  heart  to 
the  Giver  of  all  good,  for  the  unfelt  bliss  of  a  whole  night's 
sleep. 

Some  persons  are  put  to  sleep  by  having  the  soles  of  the 
feet  rubbed  gently  with  a  soft,  bare  hand,  when  opiates  made 
mild.  We  know  of  no  better  plan,  for  securing  good  sleep 
to  persons  not  specially  invalids,  than  to  observe  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 

1.  Take  a  very  light  supper,  not  later  than  six,  P.  M. 

2.  Heat  the  bare  feet  before  a  fire,  for  the  last  fifteen  min- 
utes before  bedtime. 

,  3.  Occupy  a  large  room,  with  a  window  or  door  partly 
open,  and  the  fireplace  unclosed. 

4.  Go  to  bed  at  a  regular  hour. 

5.  Get  up  the  moment  of  waking  next  morning,  at  what- 
ever time  that  may  be. 

6.  Do  not,  on  any  account,  sleep  a  moment  in  the  daytime. 
The  result  of  these  observances  will  be,  in  all  cases  where 

there  is  not  serious  disease  of  body  or  mind,  that  the  person 
will,  in  a  few  days,  go  to  sleep  promptly,  and  wake  the  very 
moment  that  nature  has  had  all  the  repose  needed. 


GOING  DOWN.  293 


TEETH  OF  CHILDREN. 

No  woman  can  be  beautiful  whose  front  teeth  are  defective 
or  lost :  such  a  blemish  to  a  young  girl  is  an  irreparable 
calamity.  A  truly  wise  and  loving  mother  would  rather 
dress  her  daughter  for  a  whole  year  in  linsey-woolsey,  and 
reduce  her  diet  to  the  plainest  kind,  —  would  painfully  econo- 
mize in  every  direction, — rather  than  let  that  daughter's  teeth 
be  neglected.  Many  a  tooth  is  lost  in  early  life  which  would 
have  done  service  for  an  age,  if  the  timely  care  of  a  judicious 
dentist  had  been  given  it ;  and  this  at  an  expense  of  only  two 
or  three  dollars.  Cases  have  come  to  our  knowledge  where 
teeth  have  been  preserved  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury, and  still  appear  sound,  by  the  skilful  plugging. 

It  is  a  cruelty  to  neglect  the  teeth  of  children.  From  the 
time  the  first  teeth  begin  to  be  shed,  until  the  tenth  year, 
every  tooth  ought  to  be  most  carefully  inspected  once  in  three 
months,  by  a  conscientious  and  skilful  dentist,  and  thereafter, 
at  least  once  in  six  months  ;  for  it  is  known  that  a  decay  less 
than  the  size  of  a  pin's  head  will  be  arrested  for  a  lifetime  by 
a  well-placed  plug ;  but  if  delayed  a  very  few  mouths,  the 
tooth  will  be  irrecoverably  lost. 


GOING  DOWN. 

A  CLERGYMAN  wrote  to  us,  some  time  since,  to  know  if  it 
would  not  be  better  to  give  up  preaching,  so  as  to  rest  his 
throat  and  give  it  a  chance  to  get  well,  he  meanwhile  taking 
the  editorship  of  a  religious  newspaper.  As  well  may  a  man 
become  able  to  run  a  long  distance  without  getting  out  of 
breath,  by  not  running  at  all,  as  one  suffering  from  an  ordi- 
nary throat  affection  may  expect  to  recover  the  power  of  his 
voice  by  the  entire  disuse  of  his  vocal  organs.  Besides,  we 
have  very  often  noticed  that  when  clergymen,  for  any  cause, 
sufficient  or  not,  lay  aside  the  gown,  they  seldom  get  fully 
into  the  traces  again.  It  is  infinitely  easier  to  go  down  to  a 


294  TOMATOES  AND  MELONS. 

worldly  calling  than  to  climb  up  to  a  higher  and  holier  one. 
Entering  the  busy  arena  of  life  for  money  has  a  contaminating 
effect  on  the  mind  of  any  man  who  has  been  once  a  clergy- 
man ;  and  the  spot  is  seldom  washed  out.  It  is,  at  all  events, 
a  most  dangerous  experiment,  and  ought  not  to  be  lightly 
made.  Sometimes  this  intermission  is  a  providential  means 
of  purification,  and  a  preparation  for  wider  and  larger  in- 
fluences ;  but  it  is  not  safe  for  any  one  to  assume  to  himself 
such  a  supposition.  So  our  voice  was  against  the  experi- 
ment ;  and  in  reply  to  some  of  our  arguments,  he  states, 
"You  speak  the  truth,  as  to  at  least  some  religious  editors. 
The  Lord  save  me  from  filling  the  office  of  a  pious,  influential 
blackguard.  Still  I  might  fall  into  the  same  temptation." 


TOMATOES   AND  MELONS. 

USE  tomatoes  largely,  both  at  breakfast  and  dinner ;  take 
them  hot  or  cold,  cooked  or  raw,  with  vinegar  or  without 
vinegar,  fried  in  sugar  and  butter,  or  stewed  with  salt  and 
>pepper.  Their  healthful  properties  consist  in  their  being 
nutritious,  easily  digested,  and  promotive  of  that  daily, 
regular  action  of  the  system,  without  which  health  is  impos- 
sible. Their  anti-constipating  quality  is  in  the  seeds :  on  the 
same  principle  that  grapes,  raisins,  and  white  mustard-seed 
have  stood  high  in  this  respect,  the  attrition  of  the  seeds  on 
the  mucous  surface  of  the  alimentary  canal  exciting  its  peri- 
staltic motion,  thus  causing  regular  daily  action. 

As  to  watermelons,  they  are  the  only  things  we  know 
which  can  be  eaten  with  impunity,  until  we  cannot  swallow 
any  more.  The  best  time  for  taking  them  is  about  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  about  four  in  the  afternoon. 
They  are  not  safe  for  very  young  children;  the  seeds  are 
especially  injurious  to  them. 


FRUIT  SEASON.  295 


FRUIT  SEASON. 

As  we  are  writing,  lovely  June  has  come,  and  the  delicious 
strawberry  will  soon  be  here,  to  be  followed  in  succession  by 
other  berries  and  fruits,  until  the  fall,  showing  at  once  the 
wisdom  and  beneficence  of  our  common  Father.  How  to  use 
them  wisely,  and  thus  derive  the  fullest  advantage  from  that 
wise  beneficence,  it  is  worth  while  to  know.  The  earlier  in 
the  day  fruits  are  eaten  the  better  :  they  should  be  ripe,  fresh, 
and  perfect,  and  eaten  in  their  natural  state,  with  the  impor- 
tant advantage  of  its  being  almost  impossible  to  take  too 
many  ;  their  healthful  qualities  depend  on  their  ripe  acidity  ; 
but  if  sweetened  with  sugar,  the  acidity  is  not  only  neutral- 
ized, but  the  stomach  is  tempted  to  receive  more  than  it  is 
possible  to  digest,  and  if  cream  is  taken  with  them,  the  labor 
of  digestion  is  increased  :  hence  the  fearful  attacks  of  cholera 
morbus,  which  sometimes  follow  the  free  use  of  fruits  and 
berries  with  sugar  and  cream. 

No  liquid  of  any  description  should  be  drank  within  an 
hour  after  eating  fruits,  nor  should  anything  else  be  eaten 
within  two  or  three  hours  after;  thus,  time  being  allowed  for 
them  to  pass  out  of  the  stomach,  the  system  derives  from 
them  all  their  enlivening,  cooling,  and  opening  influences. 
The  great  rule  is,  eat  fruits  and  berries  while  fresh,  ripe,  and 
perfect,  in  their  natural  state,  without  eating  or  drinking  any- 
thing for  at  least  two  hours  afterwards.  With  these  restric- 
tions, fruits  and  berries  may  be  eaten  in  moderation  during 
any  hour  of  the  day,  and  without  getting  tired  of  them,  or 
ceasing  to  be  benefited  by  them  during  the  whole  season.  It 
is  a  great  waste  of  lusciousness  that  fruits  and  berries,  in 
their  natural  state,  are  not  made  the  sole  dessert  at  our  meals 
for  three  fourths  of  the  year ;  human  enjoyment  and  health, 
and  even  life,  would  be  promoted  by  it. 


296  SPRAINS. 


SPRAINS. 

SPRAINS  or  strains  of  the  joints  are  very  painful,  and  more 
tedious  of  recovery  than  a  broken  bone.  What  we  call  flesh, 
is  muscle;  every  muscle  tapers  down  to  a  kind  of  string, 
which  we  call  cord  or  sinew.  The  muscle  is  above  the  joint, 
and  the  sinewy  part  is  below  it,  or  vice  versa,'  and  the  action 
is  much  like  that  of  a  string  over  a  pulley.  When  the  ankle, 
for  example,  is  "  sprained,"  the  cord,  tendon,  or  ligament 
(all  mean  the  same  thing)  is  torn,  in  part  or  whole,  either  in 
its  body,  or  from  its  attachment  to  the  bone,  and  inflamma- 
tion—  that  is,  a  rush  of  blood  to  the  spot  —  takes  place  as 
instantly  as  in  case  of  a  cut  on  the  finger.  Why  ?  For  two 
reasons.  Some  blood-vessels  are  ruptured,  and  very  natural- 
ly pour  out  their  contents ;  and  second,  by  an  infallible  phys- 
iological law,  an  additional  supply  of  blood  is  sent  to  the 
part,  to  repair  the  damages,  —  to  glue,  to  make  grow  togeth- 
er, the  torn  parts.  From  this  double  supply  of  blood,  the 
parts  are  overflowed,  as  it  were,  and  push  out,  causing  what 
we  call  "swelling,"  —  an  accumulation  of  dead  blood,  so  to 
speak.  But  dead  blood  cannot  repair  an  injury.  Two  things, 
then,  are  to  be  done,  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  to  allow  the  parts 
to  grow  together.  But  if  the  finger  be  cut,  it  never  will  heal 
as  long  as  the  wound  is  pressed  apart  every  half  hour,  nor 
will  a  torn  tendon  grow  together,  if  it  is  stretched  upon  by 
the  ceaseless  movement  of  a  joint ;  therefore,  the  first  and 
indispensable  step,  in  every  case  of  sprain,  is  perfect  quietude 
of  the  part ;  a  single  bend  of  the  joint  will  retard  what  nature 
has  been  hours  in  mending.  It  is  in  this  way  that  persons 
with  sprained  ankles  are  many  months  in  getting  well.  In 
cases  of  sprain,  then,  children  who  cannot  be  kept  still,  should 
be  kept  in  bed,  and  so  with  many  grown  persons. 

The  swelling  can  be  got  rid  of  in  several  ways ;  by  a 
bandage,  which,  in  all  cases  of  sprain,  should  be  applied  by  a 
skilful  physician.  —  otherwise,  mortification  and  loss  of  limb 
may  result.  A  bandage  thus  applied  keeps  the  joint  still, 
keeps  an  excess  of  blood  from  coming  to  the  part,  and  by  its 
pressure,  causes  an  absorption  of  extra  blood  or  other  extra- 
neous matter. 


PATENT  MEDICINES.  297 

Another  mode  of  getting  rid  of  the  swelling  is,  to  let  cold 
water  run  on  the  part  injured  for  hours ;  this  carries  away 
the  heat,  and  the  more  volatile  parts  of  extraneous  matter 
already  there,  and,  by  cooling  the  parts,  prevents  an  excess 
of  blood  being  attracted  to  the  place :  so  that,  in  reality,  a 
bandage  and  a  stream  of  cold  water  cure  sprains  in  the  same 
manner  essentially,  by  a  beautifully  acting  physiological  law. 
The  knowledge  of  these  principles  should  be  treasured  up  in 
every  mind,  as,  in  cases  where  a  physician  cannot  be  prompt- 
ly had,  incalculable  pain  and  permanent  damage  may  be  hap- 
pily avoided. 


PATENT  MEDICINES. 

THE  editor  of  the  "Letter  Box"  says,  that  within  a  year 
he  "  has  taken  pains  to  count  the  different  medicinal  prepara- 
tions offered  for  sale  for  the  cure  of  human  ailments,  and  that 
they  number  over  fifteen  hundred;  and  that,  among  all  that 
are  liquid,  there  is  not  one  which  does  not  contain  either 
opium  or  alcohol."  Still  newspapers,  secular  and  religious, 
advertise  these  without  compunction,  when  they  would  be 
horrified  to  see  in  their  columns,  even  by  mistake,  an  adver- 
tisement to  sell  "pure  liquors  "  by  the  glass  or  barrel.  Per- 
haps conscience  is  quieted  in  this  way :  "  Pure  liquors  are 
certainly  mischievous ;  but  if  they  are  rendered  impure  by 
putting  medicine  into  them,  they  may  do  some  good."  But 
yet  these  hair-splitting  gentlemen  launch  out  their  severest 
anathemas  against  the  "  unprincipled  men  who  fabricate  wines, 
and  brandies,  beers,  and  other  forms  of  alcohol."  Every 
liquid  patent  medicine  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  disguised 
alcohol  or  opium.  Fanatical  men  exclude  wine  from  the 
communion-table ;  so  teetotal  are  they,  that  a  drop  is  not 
admissible  under  any  ordinary  circumstances ;  and  yet  they 
advertise,  and  purchase,  and  swallow,  and  commend  what  is 
essentially  alcohol,  only  it  is  called  medicine  —  somebody's 
"bitters  "  or  "tonic."  If  alcohol  is  essentially  pernicious,  — 
poisonous,  — as  is  claimed  by  temperance  men,  it  is  not  the 
less  so  for  being  simply  disguised  by  some  other  name  or 
ingredient.  If  we  hope  for  victory  we  must  be  consistent ; 


298  LEAD  POISON. 

and  it  is  naturally  considered  that  consistency  —  a  firm  ad- 
herence to  solid  principles  —  should  commence  with  the  reli- 
gious press,  and  with  the  respectable  secular  newspapers,  and 
let  tonics,  bitters,  renovators,  schnapps,  made  brandy,  beastly 
beers,  and  rot-gut  whiskey  be  considered  as  in  the  same 
category. 


LEAD  POISON. 

ALL  who  use  water,  conducted  into  their  dwellings  by 
leaden  pipes,  are  interested  in  the  question,  whether  the  lead, 
under  any  circumstances,  can  impregnate  the  water  with 
poison?  It  is  certainly  so.  No  argument,  beyond  that  of 
often-ascertained  facts,  is  necessary  to  prove  this.  But  the 
water  delivered  to  one  family  will  cause  a  slow,  wasting,  and 
fatal  disease,  while  the  water  from  the  same  sources,  intro- 
duced into  the  next  house,  is  used  for  years  without  any  ap- 
preciable ill  results.  The  simple  reason  is,  that  in  the  fatal 
case,  the  flow  of  water  is  obstructed,  either  by  a  too  sudden 
bend  in  the  pipe,  or  by  a  pebble  or  other  indestructible  im- 
pediment. Standing  water  will  corrode" lead.  Simple  damp- 
ness will  corrode  lead,  and  bring  out  its  poisonous  qualities. 
Obstructions  to  a  flowing  stream  of  water  will  arrest  any  par- 
ticles in  that  water  which  are  not  the  pure  water  itself: 
those  particles  are  usually  of  vegetable  origin ;  and  as  soon 
as  a  small  portion  of  them  are  collected  in  any  part  of 
the  pipe,  or  rather  arrested  by  the  obstacle,  destructive  de- 
composition begins ;  and  the  gases  escaping  in  consequence 
of  this  process  act  upon  the  lead,  and  make  it  poisonous. 
Every  man,  therefore,  who  builds  a  home  for  himself,  should 
understand  that,  if  it  is  to  be  supplied  with  water  by  leaden 
pipes,  his  life,  and  that  of  all  his,  depends  on  the  fidelity  of 
the  plumber ;  and  as  plumbers  trust  their  work  to  apprentice- 
boys  and  uninterested  journeymen,  the  owner  should  watch 
the  laying  of  every  foot  of  pipe,  and  not  allow  an  inch  of  it  to 
be  put  down  during  his  absence ;  the  points  to  which  he 
should  bend  his  most  fixed  attention  are,  — 

First.  Let  the  pipe  be  laid  as  straight  as  possible. 

Second.  Let  every  joint  be  made  perfectly  smooth. 


WEAK  EYES.  299 

Third.  See  to  it  that  not  an  atom  of  anything  be  left  inside 
the  pipe  which  would  obstruct  the  smallest  particle  of  any 
substance,  whether  it  be  leaf,  or  wood,  or  grass,  or  hair,  or 
string,  or  worm,  or  insect,  or  anything  else. 

We  believe  the  only  thing  in  nature  which  does  not  cor- 
rode, or  diminish  in  bulk  or  lustre,  by  exposure  to  dampness 
or  earth,  is  glass.  It  is  the  most  durable  thing  in  the  uni- 
verse ;  itr'can  be  manufactured  into  any  shape,  and  is  perfect 
as  a  water  conduit ;  the  insuperable  obstacle  being,  that  it 
cannot  be  spliced  or  joined  perfectly.  We  notice,  in  that 
invaluable  paper,  the  Scientific  American,  that  this  difficulty 
is  at  last  claimed,  by  patent,  to  be  overcome.  If  so,  another 
foot  of  lead  pipe  should  never  be  laid  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  water  to  be  drunk  or  used  for  cooking. 

Meanwhile,  as  long  as  it  is  certain  that  still  water  corrodes 
lead,  the  most  unthinking  person  will  draw  the  practical 
inference,  that  the  water  from  the  hydrant  should  be  allowed 
to  run  off  for  the  first  five  or  ten  seconds  after  turning  the 
faucet  to  get  a  supply  for  drinking  or  eating. 


WEAK  EYES. 

SOME  persons  are  unable  to  read  much,  because  there  is  a 
constant  effort  to  clear  away  something  by  winking  the  eyes  ; 
at  other  times  they  water,  and  thus  interfere  with  their  use- 
ful employment.  Under  such  circumstances,  do  not  hurry 
off  to  an  oculist,  nor  go  to  poulticing  your  eyes,  nor  use  any 
of  the  hundred  and  one  cures  which  reckless  and  presumptu- 
ous ignorance  will  advise  with  wonderful  volubility  and  confi- 
dence. In  many  instances,  the  difficulty  may  be  controlled 
by  darkening  the  room,  letting  only  a  small  amount  of  light 
fall  upon  the  page  or  sewing,  — just  enough  to  enable  you  to 
see  distinctly  without  straining.  Let  the  light  come  in  rather 
from  behind,  and  to  one  side. 

The  habit  of  reading  and  sewing  by  artificial  light  is  ruin- 
ous to  many  eyes,  and  those  who  persist  in  it  will  bitterly  re- 
gret it  in  after  years. 


300  DIGESTION. 


DIGESTION. 

DIGESTION  is  that  process  which  extracts  from  our  food  the 
elements  of  growth,  repair,  and  sustenance.  If  the  digestion  is 
imperfect,  the  health  of  the  body  becomes  imperfect  in  a  few 
hours ;  and  if  by  any  means  digestion  ceases  altogether  soon 
after  a  hearty  meal,  a  man  will  certainly  die  within  a  few 
hours,  and  sometimes  almost  as  suddenly  as  if  a  bullet  were 
shot  through  his  heart.  Any  great  emotion  of  passion  or 
pleasure,  soon  after  eating,  causes  death ;  hence,  no  highly 
exciting  or  momentous  news  should  be  communicated,  even  to 
the  healthiest,  let  alone  the  sick  and  the  feeble,  immediately 
after  a  full  repast. 

Sometimes  the  wisest  of  us  will  eat  too  much ;  for  an  occa- 
sional indiscretion  of  this  kind,  two  or  three  teaspoonfuls  of 
strong  vinegar  afford  relief  to  some  persons,  but  aggravate  the 
evil  in  a  few.  The  better  plan  is,  to  take  a  long  leisure  walk 
in  the  open  air,  with  a  pleasant  associate.  Keep  on  walking 
until  entire  relief  is  experienced,  and  eat  no  more  of  anything 
until  next  morning,  so  as  to  allow  the  overtaxed  stomach  to 
recover  its  tone,  vigor,  and  elasticity. 

If  we  become  conscious  of  a  surfeit  after  night,  and  from 
that  or  any  other  cause  a  walk  is  impracticable,  a  good  sub- 
stitute is  found  in  standing  erect  with  the  clothing  removed, 
except  the  stockings,  mouth  closed,  and  rubbing  the  region 
of  the  stomach,  and  for  a  foot  around  it,  with  the  open  hand. 
Very  great  relief  is  often  afforded,  even  in  serious  cases, 
within  half  an  hour,  by  a  vigorous  manipulation  of  this  sort, 
taking  for  breakfast,  next  morning,  a  cup  of  some  kind  of  hot 
drink  and  a  single  piece  of  dry  bread ;  and  for  dinner,  a  bowl 
of  soup  with  bread-crust,  and  nothing  else  for  that  day.  The 
stomach  should  always  be  allowed  extra  rest  after  over- 
work. 


PERFUMING   SICK  ROOMS.  301 


PERFUMING  SICK  ROOMS. 

VARIOUS  things  have  been  recommended :  such  as  the 
sprinkling  of  sugar  on  burning  coals,  the  odor  of  roasted 
coffee,  sliced  onions,  and  the  like.  These  things  are  worse 
than  useless.  The  odor  of  the  sick-chamber  is  merely  over- 
powered, it  is  neither  removed  nor  destroyed ;  and,  by  the 
additional  odor  of  the  sugar  or  coffee,  each  breath  of  air 
becomes  more  solid,  by  the  displacement  of  its  more  yielding, 
vital  qualities  —  as  the  same  point  of  space  cannot  be  oc- 
cupied by  a  particle  of  odor  and  a  particle  of  oxygen  at  the 
same  time.  The  odoriferous  atom  being  more  material  than 
an  atom  of  oxygen,  the  latter  yields,  gives  way  to  the  former, 
so  that  the  expedient  is  only  apparently  beneficial ;  it  may 
be  grateful  to  a  visitor,  but  it  is  positively  hurtful  to  the 
invalid.  There  are  some  articles  which,  if  dampened  with 
water,  absolutely  absorb  bad  odors,  such  as  unslacked  lime, 
or  pulverized  charcoal.  Half  a  pound  or  less  of  copperas, 
dissolved  in  water,  and  thrown  in  a  privy,  absorbs  the  odors 
in  a  few  moments,  by  its  strong  attractive  affinity  for  the 
sulphuretted  Irydrogen.  Still  the  only  safe,  certain,  and 
absolutely  perfect  deodorizer,  is  a  thorough  ventilation  of  the 
chamber  of  the  sick,  and  it  is  a  humanity  to  accomplish  it. 
It  should  be  the  study  of  every  nurse  and  every  physician, 
during  every  hour  of  attendance,  to  promote,  in  all  possible 
ways,  a  constant  moderate  change  of  atmosphere.  This  is 
easily  done  in  fire-time  of  the  year,  by  keeping  the  grate  or 
fireplace  open,  and  occasionally  opening  a  window  or  door 
opposite.  In  the  summer-time,  the  most  simple  and  effectual 
method  is  to  build  a  fire  of  light  materials  in  the  fireplace, 
several  times  during  the  day,  oftener  during  the  night  hours, 
with  the  door  open  all  the  time ;  this  will  inevitably  give  a 
gentle  circulation,  by  which  sick  odors  will  be  driven  up  the 
chimney,  to  be  replaced  by  the  fresh  out-door  air.  It  is  not 
meant  that  a  fire  should  be  kept  burning  all  the  time,  of  a  hot 
summer's  day ;  but  to  have  a  small  blaze  from  very  light 
materials,  which  \vill  burn  out  in  half  an  hour.  The  reason 
for  this  is,  that  in  the  whole  circuit  of  nature  the  most 


302  HAIR  SPECIFICS. 

efficient  of  all  remedial  means,  in  every  disease,  and  without 
which  there  can  be  no  perfect  recovery,  is  an  abundant  and 
constant  supply  of  a  pure,  fresh  air  from  without. 


HAIR  SPECIFICS. 

LET  them  alone.  The  whole  of  them  are  a  cheat.  There  is 
not  one  single  exception  under  the  sun.  A  "  specific "  in 
medicine,  is  a  term  which  implies  certainty  of  effect.  Hair 
falls  out  from  the  want  of  nutriment.  It  dies,  just  as  a  blade 
of  grass  dies  in  a  soil  where  there  is  no  moisture.  This  want 
of  nutriment  is  functional  or  organic.  The  mechanism  which 
supplies  it,  the  apparatus,  is  there  to  make  it ;  but  it  is  out  of 
order,  and  makes  it  imperfectly  :  so  the  hair  being  imperfectly 
nourished,  is  dry,  scant,  or  a  mere  furze,  according  to  the 
degree  of  the  defective  nourishment  —  that  is  "functional" 
baldness,  and  can  be  remedied  radically  and  permanently  in 
only  one  way,  and  that  is,  by  taking  means  to  improve  the 
general  health. 

"  Organic  "  baldness  is  when  the  detect  of  nutriment  arises 
from  the  destruction  of  the  apparatus  which  made  it :  there  is 
no  machine  there.  Under  such  circumstances,  nothing  short 
of  the  power  which  made  man  first,  can  make  that  hair  grow 
again. 

When  the  scalp  is  in  any  part  bare  of  hair,  and  shiny,  or 
glistening,  that  is  organic  baldness,  and  there  is  no  remedy. 
If  there  is  not  that  shining  glistening  appearance,  but  a  multi- 
tude of  very  small  hairs,  causing  a  "  furziness  "  over  the  scalp, 
that  is  functional  baldness ;  and  two  things  are  to  be  done. 
Keep  the  scalp  clean  with  soap-suds  —  that  is  a  "  balm  of  a 
thousand  flowers,"  flavored ;  and  more  specially,  and  prin- 
cipally, seek  to  improve  your  general  health,  by  eating  plain, 
substantial  food,  at  three  regular  times  a  day,  and  b}'  spending 
three  or  four  hours,  between  meals,  in  moderate  exercise  in 
the  open  air,  in  some  engrossing  employment. 

As  to  men,  we  say,  when  the  hair  begins  to  fall  out,  the 
best  plan  is,  to  have  it  cut  short,  give  it  a  good  brushing  with 
a  moderately  stiff  brush  while  the  hair  is  dry,  then  wash  it 


COMFORT.  303 

well  with  warm  soap-suds,  then  rub  into  the  scalp,  about  the 
roots  of  the  hair,  a  little  bay  rum,  or  brandy,  or  camphor- 
water.  Do  thes'e  things  twice  a  month  ;  but  the  brushing  of 
the  scalp  may  be  profitably  done  twice  a  week.  Dampen  the 
hair  with  water  every  time  the  toilet  is  made.  Nothing  ever 
made  is  better  for  the  hair  than  pure  soft  water,  if  the  scalp  is 
kept  clean  in  the  way  we  have  named. 

The  use  of  oils,  or  pomatums,  or  grease  of  bears,  pigs, 
geese,  or  anything  else,  is  ruinous  to  the  hair  of  man  or 
woman.  We  consider  it  a  filthy  practice,  almost  universal 
though  it  be,  for  it  gathers  dust  and  dirt,  and  soils  whatever 
it  touches.  Nothing  but  pure  soft  water  should  ever  be 
allowed  on  the  heads  of  our  children.  It  is  a  different  practice 
that  robs  our  women  of  their  most  beautiful  ornament,  long 
before  their  prime.  The  hair  of  our  daughters  should  be  kept 
within  two  inches,  until  their  twelfth  year. 


COMFORT. 

THE  great  end  and  aim  of  the  mass  of  mankind  is,  to  get 
money  enough  ahead  to  make  them  "  comfortable  ;  "  and  yet 
a  moment's  reflection  will  convince  us  that  money  can  never 
purchase  "  comfort "  —  only  the  means  of  it.  A  irian  may  be 
"  comfortable  "  without  a  dollar ;  but  to  be  so,  he  must  have 
the  right  disposition,  that  is,  a  heart  and  a  mind  in  the  right 
place.  There  are  some  persons  who  are  lively,  and  cheerful, 
and  good-natured,  kind  and  forbearing,  in  a  state  of  poverty 
which  leans  upon  the  toil  of  to-day  for  to-night's  supper  and 
the  morning's  breakfast.  Such  a  disposition  would  exhibit 
the  same  loving  qualities  in  a  palace  or  on  a  throne. 

Every  day  we  meet  with  persons,  who  in  their  families  are 
cross,  ill-natured,  dissatisfied,  finding  fault  with  everybody 
and  everything,  whose  first  greeting  in  the  breakfast-room  is 
a  complaint,  whose  conversation  seldom  fails  to  end  in  an 
enumeration  of  difficulties  and  hardships,  whose  last  word  at 
night  is  an  angry  growl.  If  you  can  get  such  persons  to  rea- 
son on  the  subject,  they  will  acknowledge  that  there  is  some 
"  want  "  at  the  bottom  of  it ;  the  "  want  "  of  a  better  house,  a 


304  COMFORT. 

finer  dress,  a  more  handsome  equipage,  a  more  dutiful  child, 
a  more  provident  husband,  a  more  cleanly,  or  systematic,  or 
domestic  wife.  At  one  time  it  is  a  "wretcned  cook"  which 
stands  between  them  and  the  sun ;  or  a  lazy  house-servant,  or 
an  impertinent  carriage-driver.  The  "  want "  of  more  money 
than  Providence  has  thought  proper  to  bestow,  will  be  found 
to  embrace  all  these  things.  Such  persons  may  feel  assured 
that  people  who  cannot  make  themselves  really  comfortable 
in  any  one  set  of  ordinary  circumstances,  would  not  be  so 
under  any  other.  A  man  who  has  a  canker  eating  out  his 
heart,  will  carry  it  with  him  wherever  he  goes ;  and  if  it  be  a 
spiritual  canker,  whether  of  envy,  habitual  discontent,  un- 
bridled ill-nature,  it  would  go  with  the  gold,  and  rust  out  all 
its  brightness.  Whatever  a  man  is  to-day  with  a  last  dollar, 
he  will  be  radically,  essentially,  to-morrow  with  millions,  un- 
less the  heart  is  changed.  Stop,  reader ;  that  is  not  the  whole 
truth,  for  the  whole  truth  has  something  of  the  terrible  in  it. 
Whatever  of  an  undesirable  disposition  a  man  has  to-day 
without  money,  he  will  have  to-morrow  to  an  exaggerated 
extent,  unless  the  heart  be  changed  :  the  miser  will  become 
more  miserly;  the  drunkard,  more  drunken;  the  debauchee, 
more  debauched  ;  the  fretful,  still  more  complaining.  Hence, 
the  striking  wisdom  of  the  Scripture  injunction,  that  all  our 
ambitions  should  begin  with  this  :  "  Seek  first  the  kingdom  of 
God  and  *his  righteousness ;  "  that  is  to  say,  if  you  are  not 
comfortable,  not  happy  now,  under  the  circumstances  which 
surround  you,  and  wish  to  be  more  comfortable,  more  happy, 
your  first  step  should  be  to  seek  a  change  of  heart,  of  disposi- 
tion, and  then  the  other  things  will  follow — without  the 
greater  wealth  !  And  having  the  moral  comfort,  bodily  com- 
fort, bodily  health  will  follow  apace,  to  the  extent  of  your 
using  rational  means.  Bodily  comfort,  or  health,  and  mental 
comfort,  have  on  one  another  the  most  powerful  reactions ; 
neither  can  be  perfect  without  the  other,  at  least,  approx- 
imates to  it ;  in  short,  cultivate  health  and  a  good  heart ;  for 
with  these  you  may  be  "  comfortable  "  without  a  farthing ; 
without  them,  never  !  — although  you  may  possess  millions  1 


EATING  BY  RULE.  305 


EATING  BY  RULE. 

SCIENTIFIC  investigation  assures  us,  that  "the  amount  of 
nourishment  required  by  an  animal  for  its  support  must  be  in 
a  direct  ratio  with  the  quantity  of  oxygen  taken  into  the 
system ;  "  which,  being  put  into  homely  English,  means,  that 
as  our  supply  of  oxygen  comes  from  the  air  we  breathe,  it  fol- 
lows, that  the  more  pure  air  we  inhale,  the  more  oxygen  we 
consume ;  it  then  follows,  necessarily,  as  out-door  air  is  the 
purest,  that  is,  has  most  oxygen  in  it,  the  more  we  breathe  of 
that  out-door  air,  the  more  nourishment  do  we  require  ;  and 
the  more  nourishment  a  man  requires,  the  better  appetite  he 
has  :  hence,  to  get  a  natural  appetite,  a  man  must  go  out  of 
doors ;  and  as  it  is  very  tiresome  to  be  out  of  doors,  unless 
one  is  doing  something,  and,  as  if  we  do  something,  it  had 
better  be  of  some  account,  therefore,  whoever  wants  to  whet 
up  his  appetite,  had  better  spend  his  time  out  of  doors,  doing 
something  useful.  A  very  perspicacious  ratiocination  I 

All  this  seems  very  rational  and  very  right.  Then  why  do 
we  not  act  up  to  it?  Why  pursue  the  very  opposite  course, 
and  instead  of  going  out  of  doors  when  we  feel  dull,  and 
stupid,  and  cross,  and  desponding,  loll  about  the  house,  as 
blue  as  indigo,  with  not  a  word  or  smile  for  anybody? 
Having  no  appetite,  we  bethink  ourselves  of  "  tonics."  The 
reckless  take  wine,  or  brandy,  or  vulgar  beer ;  the  con- 
scientious do  worse,  and  take  physic,  calling  it  "  bitters," 
tansy,  dogwood,  quinine,  and  such  "  simple  things,"  especially 
the  quinine,  which  has  helped  to  invalid  and  kill  more  people 
than  would  make  a  monument  sky  high. 

Well,  what  is  the  result  of  these  "  tonics  "?  They  make  us 
feel  better  —  for  a  while  —  give  us  an  appetite  for  more  than 
we  can  digest,  and  being  imperfectly  digested,  the  blood 
which  it  makes  is  not  only  imperfect  as  to  quality,  it  is  too 
great  in  quantity ;  but  it  is  in  the  body,  and  must  crowd  itself 
somewhere,  always  selecting  the  weaker  part,  which,  in  most 
cases,  is  the  head  !  —  very  natural  that ;  and  there  is  head- 
ache, dulness  —  never  was  much  brightness  in  that  head  any- 
how —  in  fact,  it  amounts  to  stupidity,  and  such  persons 


306  DISINFECTANTS. 

being  naturally  stupid,  aud  making  themselves  artificially  so, 
they  have  a  double  right  to  the  title  :  as  the  youth  had  to  a 
diploma,  who  graduated  at  two  colleges,  and  became,  as  the 
calf  did  which  sucked  two  cows,  a  very  great  calf! 

Therefore,  never  eat  by  rule.  Never  eat  at  one  meal  as 
much  as  you  did  at  the  corresponding  one  the  day  before, 
simply  because  that  was  your  usual  quantity ;  but  eat  accord- 
ing to  your  appetite.  If  you  have  no  appetite,  eat  nothing 
until  you  do.  If  you  are  in  a  hurry  for  that  appetite,  and 
time  is  valuable  to  you,  do  not  attempt  to  whet  it  up  by 
stimulating  food,  by  exciting  drinks,  or  forcing  tonics ;  but 
bring  it  about  in  a  natural  way,  by  moderate  and  continuous 
exercise  in  the  open  air,  in  something  that  is  interesting, 
exciting,  and,  in  itself,  useful.  Violent  spasmodic  exercise 
is  injurious,  and  even  dangerous  to  sedentary  persons  ;  hence 
we  are  opposed  to  gymnasiums,  unless  superintended  by 
intelligent  men,  practical  physiologists.  Let  it  be  remem- 
bered, as  a  truth  which  cannot  be  denied,  that  a  given  amount 
of  violent  exercise,  taken  within  an  hour,  will  do  many  times 
the  good  if  scattered  continuously  over  a  space  of  five  hours, 
without  any  of  the  danger  that  pertains  to  the  former,  es- 
pecially as  to  feeble  persons.  All  exercise  carried  to  severe 
fatigue  is  an  injury  ;  better  have  taken  none. 


DISINFECTANTS. 

SOME  one  says  that  noxious  effluvia  are  absorbed  in  an  in- 
credibly short  space  of  time,  if  two  or  three  onions  are  cut  in 
thin  slices  and  put  on  a  plate,  to  be  renewed  every  six  hours. 
This  is  just  as  true  as  that  the  smarting  from  the  scratch  of  a 
pin  becomes  instantaneously  unfelt  if  the  person  is  knocked 
down.  The  only  safe,  healthful,  and  effectual  method  of 
keeping  a  sick-room  "  sweet "  is,  to  keep  everything  scrupu- 
lously dry  and  clean.  Instantly  remove  every  article  of 
clothing  or  bedding  which  has  an  atom  of  dampness  or 
moisture  upon  it ;  do  not  allow  even  pure  water  to  stand  a 
moment  in  the  apartment ;  let  the  fireplace  be  always  kept 
open,  with  a  frequent  and  free  admission  of  the  pure  and  the 


EARLY  BISINO.  307 

fresh  air  from  out-doors.  This  should  be  done  every  two  or 
three  hours  during  the  twenty-four.  It  is  the  pure  air  that 
sick  people  want,  not  an  atmosphere  loaded  with  the  fumes 
of  onions  ;  for  in  a  pint  of  air  they  displace  just  as  many  par- 
ticles of  fresh  air  as  would  burnt  sugar,  cologne-water,  or  the 
sulphuretted  hydrogen  of  the  privy ;  for,  be  it  remembered, 
it  is  not  the  odor  which  does  the  mischief,  so  much  as  the 
deficiency  of  nutritious  particles  of  the  atmosphere  which  it 
takes  the  place  of.  We  should  rather  think  that  every  addi- 
tional odoriferous  article  introduced  into  a  sick-room  only 
added  to  the  difficulty,  even  though  it  were  the  perfumes 
from  "  Araby  the  blest."  The  greatest  humanity  we  can  show 
to  the  sick  is,  to  secure  to  them  the  most  important  remedies 
ever  known,  to  wit,  quietness,  cleanliness,  and  pure  air. 
These  alone  would  cure  three  fourths  of  all  our  diseases ; 
but  we  will  not  use  them ;  yet  they  are  everywhere  attain- 
able, and  cost  nothing  but  a  little  trouble.  With  the  same 
physicians  and  the  same  medicines,  the  mortality  of  the 
British  army  in  the  Crimea  was  diminished  one  half,  through 
the  influence  of  Florence  Nightingale  in  the  procurement  of 
greater  comfort  and  cleanliness  among  the  sick. 


EARLY  RISING. 

HEALTH  and  long  life  are  almost  universally  associated 
with  early  rising ;  and  we  are  pointed  to  countless  old  people, 
as  evidence  of  its  good  effects  on  the  general  system.  Can 
any  of  our  readers,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  give  a  good 
and  conclusive  reason  why  health  should  be  attributed  to  this 
habit  ?  We  know  that  old  people  get  up  early ;  but  it  is 
simply  because  they  can't  sleep.  Moderate  old  age  does  not 
require  much  sleep ;  hence,  in  the  aged,  early  rising  is  a 
necessity,  or  a  convenience,  and  is  not  a  cause  of  health  in 
itself.  There  is  a  large  class  of  early  risers; — very  early 
risers  —  who  may  be  truly  said  not  to  have  a  day's  health  in 
a  year,  —  the  thirsty  folk,  for  example,  who  drink  liquor 
until  midnight,  and  rise  early  to  get  more.  One  of  our 
earliest  recollections  is  that  of  "old  soakers"  making  their 


308  EABLY  RISING. 

"devious  way"  to  the  grog-shop  or  the  tavern  bar-room, 
before  sunrise,  for  their  morning  grog.  Early  rising,  to  be 
beneficial,  must  have  two  concomitants, — to  retire  early, 
and,  on  rising,  to  be  properly  employed.  One  of  the  most 
eminent  divines  in  this  country  rose  by  daylight  for  many 
years,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  became  an  invalid ;  has 
travelled  the  world  over  for  health,  and  has  never  regained 
it,  nor  ever  will.  It  is  rather  an  early  retiring  that  does 
the  good,  by  keeping  people  out  of  those  mischievous  prac- 
tices which  darkness  favors,  and  which  need  not  here  be  more 
particularly  referred  to. 

Another  important  advantage  of  retiring  early  is,  that  the 
intense  stillness  of  midnight  and  the  early  morning  hours 
favors  that  unbroken  repose  which  is  the  all-powerful  reno- 
vator of  the  tired  system.  Without,  then,  the  accompaniment 
of  retiring  early,  "early  rising"  is  worse  than  useless,  and  is 
positively  mischievous.  Every  person  should  be  allowed  to 
"  have  his  sleep  out,"  otherwise  the  duties  of  the  day  cannot 
be  properly  performed,  Avill  be  necessarily  slighted,  even  by 
the  most  conscientious. 

To  all  young  persons,  to  students,  to  the  sedentary,  and  to 
invalids,  the  fullest  sleep  that  the  system  will  take,  without 
artificial  means,  is  the  balm  of  life ;  without  it  there  can  be 
no  restoration  to  health  and  activity  again.  Never  wake  up 
the  sick  or  infirm,  or  young  children,  of  a  morning.  It  is  a 
barbarity.  Let  them  wake  of  themselves  ;  let  the  care  rather 
be  to  establish  an  hour  for  retiring,  so  early,  that  their  fullest 
sleep  may  be  out  before  sunrise. 

Another  item  of  very  great  importance  is,  do  not  hurry 
up  the  young  and  the  weakly.  It  is  no  advantage  to  pull 
them  out  of  bed  as  soon  as  their  eyes  are  open  ;  nor  is  it 
best  for  the  studious,  or  even  for  the  well,  who  have  passed 
an  unusually  fatiguing  day,  to  jump  out  of  bed  the  moment 
they  wake  up :  let  them  remain,  without  going  to  sleep  again, 
until  the  sense  of  weariness  passes  from  the  limbs.  Nature 
abhors  two  things, — violence  and  a  vacuum.  The  sun  does 
not  break  out  at  once  into  the  glare  of  the  meridian.  The 
diurnal  flowers  unfold  themselves  by  slow  degrees ;  nor  fleet- 
est beast  nor  sprightliest  bird  leaps  at  once  from  its  resting- 
place.  By  all  of  which  we  mean  to  say  that,  as  no  physio- 


STAMMERING.  309 

logical  truth  is  more  demonstrable  than  that  the  brain,  and 
with  it  the  whole  nervous  system,  is  recuperated  by  sleep,  it 
is  of  the  first  importance,  as  to  the  well-being  of  the  human 
system,  that  it  have  its  fullest  measure  of  it;  and  to  that  end, 
the  habit  of  retiring  to  bed  early  should  be  made  imperative 
on  all  children,  and  no  ordinary  event  should  be  allowed  to 
interfere  with  it.  Its  moral  healthfulness  is  not  less  impor- 
tant than  its  physical.  Many  a  young  man,  many  a  young 
woman,  has  made  the  first  step  towards  degradation,  and 
crime,  and  disease  after  ten  o'clock  at  night :  at  which  hour, 
the  year  round,  the  old,  the  middle-aged,  and  the  young 
should  be  in  bed;  and  then  the  "early  rising"  will  take  care 
of  itself,  with  the  incalculable  accompaniment  of  a  fully-rested 
body  and  a  renovated  brain.  We  repeat  it,  there  is  neither 
wisdom,  nor  safety,  nor  health  in  early  rising,  in  itself;  but 
there  is  all  of  them  in  the  persistent  practice  of  retiring  to 
bed  at  an  early  hour,  winter  and  summer. 


STAMMERING. 

STAMMERING  is  sometimes  the  result  of  habit  or  careless- 
ness ;  at  others  it  succeeds  a  long  attack  of  sickness.  It  is  a 
kind  of  St.  Vitus's  Dance  of  the  tongue.  Not  unfrequently 
it  is  brought  on  by  the  harsh  treatment  or  inveterate  ill-nature 
of  parents,  teachers,  or  superiors,  in  habitually  meeting  those 
under  them  with  threatenings,  scolding,  or  fault-finding.  We 
have  met  before  now  with  a  miserable  class  of  human,  or 
rather  inhuman,  beings,  who  scarcely  ever  enter  a  room, 
where  are  children,  or  servants,  or  dependants,  without  the 
expression  of  some  disapprobation  or  complaint.  This  has 
very  naturally  the  effect  to  confuse  and  intimidate  a  child, 
especially  one  of  a  highly  nervous  or  excitable  temperament ; 
while  steadiness  and  composure  are  the  very  antipodes  of 
stuttering,  which  is  essentially  the  throwing  out  too  much 
nervous  power,  sending  too  much  nervous  influence  to  the 
muscles  which  are  employed  in  speaking ;  the  result  is,  a 
want  of  proper  control  of  those  muscles.  Hence,  whatever 
diminishes  the  nervous  supply  to  those  parts,  whatever  directs 


310  STAMMERING. 

the  nervous  flow  to  some  other  part  of  the  body,  diminishes 
the  stammering  in  the  same  proportion.  This  is  the  princi- 
ple of  cure  in  all  cases,  although  we  have  never  seen  a  refer- 
ence to  it  by  any  writer.  Some  twenty  years  ago  the  New 
York  world  was  struck  with  dumb  amazement  at  the  instan- 
taneous remedy  for  stammering,  which  was,  thrusting  a 
knitting-needle  through  the  tongue.  But  it  cured  only  until 
the  tongue  got  well,  because,  while  the  tongue  was  sore  from 
the  barbarous  operation,  the  extra  nervous  energy  was  ex- 
pended in  the  instinctive  effort  to  refrain  from  any  other 
than  a  careful  movement  of  the  tongue.  The  expedient  of 
Demosthenes,  in  speakiug  with  little  pebbles  in  his  mouth, 
was  in  the  same  direction.  One  of  the  most  inveterate 
stammerers  in  London  became  possessed  with  a  fancy  that 
he  would  make  a  good  actor.  On  his  first  appearance  the 
theatre  was  crowded,  in  curiosity.  During  the  whole  play 
he  did  not  mispronounce  a  single  word,  did  not  fail  to  utter 
distinctly  a  single  syllable ;  because  the  mind  was  engaged 
in  another  effort,  was  excited  in  another  direction,  the  extra 
nervous  power  found  vent  in  another  outlet ;  precisely  as  in 
the  more  recently  alleged  accidental  discovery  of  a  lady,  that 
reading  or  speaking  in  a  whisper  is  an  instantaneous  remedy ; 
because  it  requires  an  effort  to  whisper,  the  mind's  attention 
is  directed  to  the  act  of  whispering,  and  not  to  the  distinct- 
ness of  utterance.  We  will  venture  the  assertion  that  no 
man  ever  stammered  in  "popping  the  question,"  nor  a  young 
lady  halt  out  "  Y-ye-ye-yes."  Instinct  itself  prompts  a  cure. 
After  a  long  illness  from  an  accident,  our  Robert,  aged  three 
years,  suddenly  began  to  stammer  most  vexatiously.  His 
whole  system  was  in  a  debilitated  and  irritable  condition. 
He  had  never  come  in  contact  with  a  stammerer ;  and  be- 
lieving that  scolding,  or  threats,  or  ridicule,  would  only 
serve  to  fix  the  habit  for  life,  —  which  would  have  been  a 
great  misfortune,  —  we  made  an  effort,  without  apparent 
effort,  to  divert  his  attention  to  some  other  thing  than  the 
stammering.  For  example,  when  he  asked  for  anything,  he 
was  told,  "Now,  if  you  ask  for  it  plainly,  you  shall  have  it;  " 
and,  before  we  were  aware  of  it,  we  found  him,  whenever  he 
attempted  to  ask  for  anything,  striking  his  little  hand  against 
his  thigh,  as  he  stood  before  us,  at  the  enunciation  of  every 


NIGHT  AIR.  311 

syllable ;  and,  by  encouragement,  we  found  the  habit  broken 
up  in  a  few  months.  As  it  is  a  lifelong  calamity  to  have  a 
son  or  daughter  grow  up  a  stutterer,  we  trust  these  hints  may 
be  turned  to  practical  account  by  those  whom  it  may  concern. 
Anything  else  done  at  the  time  of  uttering  each  syllable 
divides  the  attention,  gives  two  outlets  to  the  extra  nervous 
flow,  and  the  remedy  is  complete ;  make  a  mark,  pull  a 
string,  turn  a  leaf,  stamp  the  foot  —  any  one  of  them  will 
effect  a  cure  in  a  reasonable  time. 


NIGHT   AIR. 

DURING  the  months  of  September  and  October,  throughout 
the  United  States,  wherever  there  are  chills,  and  fever  and 
ague,  intermittents,  or  the  more  deadly  forms  of  fever,  it  is  a 
pernicious,  and  even  dangerous  practice,  to  sleep  with  the 
outer  doors  or  windows  open ;  because  miasm,  marsh  ema- 
nations, the  product  of  decaying  vegetation,  —  all  of  which 
are  different  terms  expressing  the  same  thing,  —  is  made  so 
light  by  heat,  that  it  ascends  at  once  towards  the  upper  por- 
tion of  atmospheric  space,  and  is  not  breathed  during  the 
heat  of  the  day ;  but  the  cool  nights  of  the  fall  of  the  year 
condense  it,  make  it  heavy,  and  it  settles  on  the  ground,  is 
breathed  into  the  lungs,  incorporated  into  the  blood  ;  and  if 
in  its  concentrated  form,  as  in  certain  localities  near  Rome,  it 
causes  sickness  and  death  within  a  few  hours.  The  plagues 
which  devastated  eastern  countries,  in  earlier  ages,  were 
caused  by  the  concentrated  emanations  from  marshy  locali- 
ties, or  districts  of  decaying  vegetation ;  and  the  common 
observation  of  the  higher  class  of  people  was,  that  those  who 
occupied  the  upper  stories,  not  even  coming  down  stairs  for 
market  supplies,  but  drew  them  up  by  ropes  attached  to  bas- 
kets, had  entire  immunity  from  disease,  for  two  reasons  :  the 
higher  the  abode,  the  less  compact  is  the  deadly  atmosphere ; 
besides,  the  higher  rooms  in  a  house,  in  summer,  are  the 
warmer  ones,  and  the  miasm  less  concentrated.  The  lower 
rooms  are  colder,  making  the  air  more  dense.  So,  by  keep- 
ing all  outer  doors  and  windows  closed,  especially  the  lower 


312  STUDENT  LONGEVITY. 

ones,  the  building  is  less  cool  and  comfortable,  but  it  ex- 
cludes the  infectious  air,  while  its  warmth  sends  what  enters 
through  the  crevices  immediately  to  the  ceilings  of  the  rooms, 
where  it  congregates,  and  is  not  breathed ;  hence  is  it  that 
men  who  entered  the  bar-room  and  dining-saloons  of  the 
National  Hotel,  remaining  but  a  few  brief  hours,  were  at- 
tacked with  the  National  Hotel  disease,  while  ladies  who 
occupied .  upper  rooms,  where  constant  fires  were  burning, 
escaped  attack,  although  remaining  in  the  house  for  weeks  at 
a  time.  It  was  for  the  same  reason  that  Dr.  Rush  was  accus- 
tomed to  advise  families,  in  the  summer  time,  not  being  able 
to  leave  the  city,  to  cause  their  younger  children  especially 
to  spend  their  time  above  stairs.  We  have  spent  a  lifetime 
ourselves  in  the  West  and  extreme  South,  and  know  in  our 
own  person,  and  as  to  those  who  had  firmness  to  follow  our 
recommendation,  that  whole  families  will  escape  all  the  forms 
of  fall  fevers  who  will  have  bright  fires  kindled  at  sunrise 
and  sunset  in  the  family  room.  But  it  is  too  plain  a  prescrip- 
tion to  secure  observance  in  more  than  one  family  in  ten 
thousand.  After  the  third  frost,  and  until  the  fall  of  the  next 
year,  it  is  an  important  means  of  health  for  persons  to  sleep 
with  an  outer  door  or  window  partly  open,  having  the  bed  in 
such  a  position  as  to  be  protected  from  a  draught  of  air. 
We  advise  that  no  person  should  go  to  work  or  take  exercise 
in  the  morning  on  an  empty  stomach ;  but  if  it  is  stimulated 
to  action  by  a  cup  of  coffee,  or  a  crust  of  bread,  or  apple,  or 
orange,  exercise  can  be  taken,  not  only  with  impunity,  but  to 
high  advantage  in  all  chill  and  fever  localities. 


STUDENT  LONGEVITY. 

STUDENTS  are  not  necessarily  short-lived.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  active  exercise  of  the  brain  which  impairs  the  constitu- 
tion, or  lessens  the  duration  of  existence.  Newton  died  at 
the  age  of  eighty-five ;  Roger  Bacon  reached  his  eightieth 
year;  and  his  namesake,  the  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  Eng- 
land, of  whom  it  was  said  that,  "  as  a  man  of  genius  and  a 
philosopher,  no  language  can  be  too  lofty  for  his  praise,"  was 


STUDENT  LONGEVITY.  313 

in  his  sixty-sixth  year  when  he  closed  his  eyes ;  and  but  for 
his  extravagant  habits,  might  easily  have  lived  a  quarter  of  a 
century  longer ;  Copernicus  was  seventy.  These  are  among 
the  very  greatest  names  in  science,  philosophy,  and  law,  of 
the  era  preceding  our  own ;  and  of  the  great  in im Is  of  the 
present  generation  which  dazzle  the  eye  by  the  splendor  of 
their  shining,  by  the  extent  of  their  attainments,  or  the 
beauty  of  their  characters,  and  often  both,  we  might  name,  in 
medicine,  Charles  Caldwell,  of  Kentucky,  aged  eighty-one  ;  in 
genius  and  learning,  Eliphalet  Nott,  now  in  his  eighty-sixth 
year ;  in  natural  philosophy,  Professor  Silliman,  but  six  years 
younger.  In  his  ninetieth  year,  the  great  Humboldt  was  not 
conscious  of  any  abatement  of  mental  power,  and  his  splendid 
mind  still  commanded  the  veneration  of  two  hemispheres. 
The  greatest  students  among  our  political  men  were  Benton, 
at  seventy-five  ;  and  John  Quincy  Adams,  who  died  with  his 
harness  on,  at  the  age  of  fourscore  years.  Hamel,  one  of  the 
greatest  scientific  minds  of  Russia,  visited  Valentia,  "  not  far 
from  ninety,"  to  wonder  and  admire,  as  he  gazed  at  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  age,  —  the  Atlantic  Cable.  Then  com- 
ing down  to  a  broad  fact,  here  at  home  among  ourselves, 
within  one  year,  of  thirty  graduates  of  Harvard  College 
dying,  more  than  one  half  were  over  seventy  years  ;  nearly  a 
quarter  were  over  eighty  ;  and  one  died  at  the  age  of  ninety- 
three.  During  the  same  year,  of  one  half  the  graduates  of 
old  Yale  who  have  passed  to  fields  of  exploration  beyond  the 
River  of  Death,  and  to  them  all  new,  one  half  had  passed  the 
limits  of  threescore  years  and  ten.  When  it  is  taken  into 
account,  that  of  all  the  modern  names  given,  it  is  known  that 
a  temperate  life  has  been  a  peculiarity,  almost  to  a  proverb, 
—  temperate  as  to  drinking,  and  as  to  eating  —  almost  abste- 
mious, —  we  are  impelled  to  the  conclusion,  that  a  man  who 
is  temperate  as  to  the  habits  of  his  life,  may  study  never  so 
hard,  and  not  only  "  endure  to  the  end  "  of  the  usual  limit  of 
"threescore  years  and  ten,"  but  even  at  that  age  may  possess 
a  mind  "  undimmed  by  the  flight  of  years."  On  the  other 
hand,  when  we  see  a  great  mind  go  out  in  the  njght  of  the 
grave  at  forty  or  fifty,  or  any  short  of  threescore,  that  mind 
should  at  least  inquire,  and  leave  an  answer  as  a  beacon-light 
for  after  voyagers,  Do  I  die  thus  earl}'  "  in  the  course  of 


314  MEDICAL  PRINCIPLES. 

nature,"  or  has  it  come  thus  by  mine  own  hand,  in  that  I 
have  not,  as  I  ought  to  have  done,  striven  against  the  pas- 
sions and  appetites  of  a  lower  nature?  To  die  at  the  maturi- 
ty of  a  great  intellect,  upon  the  very  entrance  of  fields  of 
view,  just  expanding  to  the  enraptured  gaze  of  the  beholder, 
—  the  loss  to  himself  of  a  pure  delight  how  immeasurable  ! 
and  to  the  world,  figures  may  not  compute  it.  Doubtless 
the  dial  of  "  progress  "  has  been  put  back  many  a  degree  in 
just  such  a  way  as  this.  Reader,  health  is  a  duty  to  yourself 
and  the  age  you  live  in.  The  greater  your  intelligence,  the 
greater  your  dereliction ;  and  for  which  you  will  have  to  ac- 
count at  the  Judgment.  To  know  what  health  is,  and  how  to 
preserve  it,  is  the  great  object  of  our  writings ;  and  the 
regret  is,  that  it  is  a  kind  of  knowledge  almost  entirely 
neglected  by  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor  together,  until  a 
time  in  life  too  late  to  make  its  acquisition  of  any  great 
practical  advantage  —  a  knowledge  which  the  fewest  of  the 
few  are  wise  enough  to  acquire  in  early  life.  None  but  an 
Adams,  a  Nott,  a  Benton,  a  Humboldt  in  embryo,  is  com- 
petent to  a  wisdom  like  this. 


MEDICAL  PRINCIPLES. 

THERE  are  certain  general  principles  in  medicine,  few  and 
simple,  easily  understood,  and  remembered  without  difficul- 
ty; but  instead  of  mastering  these,  the  masses  prefer  to  lum- 
ber up  their  memories  with  innumerable,  and  often  ridiculous 
applications  of  them.  We  name  one  at  this  time. 

Poultices  are  of  very  extended  application ;  that  of  a  live 
chicken  cut  open  and  applied  instantly,  is  believed  by  some 
to  possess  extraordinary  virtue ;  the  entrails  of  a  frog  are  in 
great  esteem  by  others  ;  but  how  a  frog  is  to  be  obtained  in 
winter,  is  not  explained  ;  while  a  live  chicken  would  be  rath- 
er an  expensive  application  in  a  city.  Scraped  potatoes  are 
advised  by  some  as  possessing  very  great  "drawing"  powers. 
Dogs  get  well  of  their  wounds  without  poultices.  Dogs  were 
the  doctors  who  attended  Lazarus ;  and  what  is  more  than 
can  be  said  of  some  modern  doctors,  they  treated  him  as  they 


MEDICAL  PRINCIPLES  315 

\ 

did  themselves,  and,  no  doubt,  with  advantage.  Dogs  lick  their 
sores.  It  is  the  instinct  of  nature.  Now  let  us  not  run  off  in 
the  manner  of  the  ignorant  and  superstitious,  and  imagine 
there  is  some  mysterious  virtue  in  a  dog's  tongue,  some  mag- 
netic agency  passing  back  and  forth ;  but  let  us  look  with  our 
eyes  open,  and  in  the  light  of  a  few  well-known  facts.  Take 
a  common  boil,  about  which  most  of  us  have  had  a  feeling 

7  O 

experience  :  the  surrounding  skin  is  dry,  hot,  and  hard  ;  in  its 
natural  state  it  is  moist  and  soft.  To  bring  it  to  its  natural 
state  again,  we  have  only  to  remove  the  dryness,  and  reduce 
it  to  its  natural  temperature  ;  and  what  more  appropriate  than 
simple  soft  water,  rained  or  distilled?  But  to  get  the  full 
virtue  of  the  application,  it  should  be  kept  moist  all  the  time  ; 
this  would  require  constant  attention,  the  incessant  applying 
of  water,  which  is  in  a  measure  impracticable,  except  to  the 
unfortunate  few  who  have  nothing  to  do.  The  humane  sur- 
geon is  often  called  to  the  exercise  of  a  considerateness, 
which  a  large  heart  soon  learns  in  its  frequent  contact  Avith 
poverty,  misfortune,  and  disease,  —  it  is  in  adapting  his  pre- 
scriptions to  the  means  of  the  invalid,  as  far  as  possible  ;  he 
never  advises  the  worn  and  wan  sewing -girl  to  visit  Saratoga, 
nor  the  consumptive  day-laborer  to  go  to  the  south,  or  spend 
a  winter  in  Cuba  !  So  in  the  case  of  one  suffering  great  pain, 
which  can  be  best  cured  by  keeping  it  constantly  moist,  he 
does  not  order  a  nurse  who  shall  stand  by  and  apply  water 
from  morning  until  night ;  but  he  bethinks  him,  that  some 
substances  do  not  dry  up  as  soon  as  water  (and  which  is,  out 
of  large  towns,  almost  as  easily  had)  ;  one  of  these  he  kuows 
to  be  milk ;  but  even  milk  will  require  too  steady  an  attend- 
ance, so  he  adds  stale  bread  to  it,  which  would  retain  the 
moisture  still  a  longer  time ;  and  experience  has  found,  that 
under  all  ordinary  circumstances,  a  poultice  of  sweet  milk 
and  stale  "  light  bread "  answers  a  larger  number  of  condi- 
tions than  any  other,  with  the  advantage  of  being  always  at 
hand  in  ordinary  households.  The  softest  fluid  in  nature  is 
the  saliva ;  and  it  is  in  this  property  we  find  the  virtue  of  the 
dog's  licking.  But  should  the  moistening  quality  be  applied 
cold  or  warm?  We  must  inquire  of  science.  All  know  that 
the  virtue  of  a  cold  or  shower  bath  is  in  the  reaction,  —  the 
"  glow,"  as  it  is  called,  —  which  is  nothing  more  than  the 


316  MEDICAL  PRINCIPLES. 

rushing  of  blood  to  the  surface  in  unnatural  quantity  and 
force  ;  but  the  trouble  in  a  boil  or  other  sore  is,  that  there  is 
too  much  blood  there  already ;  instead  of  bringing  more 
there,  it  is  important  to  relieve  it  of  its  present  load.  So,  if 
a  cold  poultice  is  applied  to  a  painful  sore,  besides  the  un- 
pleasantness of  the  shock ,  there  is  the  reaction  inevitable  as  a 
consequence  of  that  shock ;  therefore,  nature  seems  to  teach 
us  that  all  applications  to  painful  sores  should  be  moist  and 
soft,  and  warm  and  constant ;  the  dog's  tongue  answers  all 
these  requirements ;  and  so  does  a  warm  milk-and-bread 
poultice. 

But  there  is  another  beautiful  physiological  truth  in  warm 
applications,  wherever  there  is  inflammatory  action,  which  it 
will  be  instructive  to  look  at.  It  is  evaporation  which  cools. 
But  heat  must  precede  evaporation.  Ice-cold  water  does  not 
evaporate,  until  warmth  is  applied  ;  this  requires  time  : 
hence,  if  warm  water  is  applied  to  an  inflamed  surface,  evap- 
oration commences  instantly,  and  proceeds  rapidly.  But  in 
the  case  of  a  boil,  what  is  evaporated?  what  is  carried  away? 
Two  things.  First,  the  heat.  If  the  hand  is  put  in  warm 
water,  and  then  exposed  to  the  atmosphere,  a  sense  of  cold- 
ness is  present ;  it  is  because  the  hand  is  parting  with  its 
warmth,  giving  it  up  to  the  vapor  of  water  which  is  rising 
from  the  hand  and  passing  upwards.  But  another  effect  is 
produced.  A  dry,  hot  skin  retains  all  beneath  it,  because 
the  pores  are  closed  ;  but  as  soon  as  it  is  moistened  the  pores 
open,  and  at  once  the  more  gaseous  and  watery  portions  of 
the  blood  escape  —  thus  reducing  the  bulk  of  the  blood, 
reducing  the  distention,  and  thus  reducing  the  pain. 

In  eastern  countries,  and  in  earlier  ages,  where  water  in 
many  places  and  under  many  circumstances  was  not  very 
accessible,  another  substance  was  used ;  and  its  employment 
became  almost  universal  for  wounds  and  bruises  and  putrefy- 
ing sores  — and  that  was  oil.  For  aught  we  know,  the  whole 
Materia  Medica  of  ancient  surgery  was  wine  and  oil  —  wine  to 
sustain,  and  oil  to  soften,  and  moisten,  and  lubricate,  and 
cool.  The  great  practical  truth  in  all  this  is  :  the  first  neces- 
sity of  a  boil,  or  sore,  or  wound,  is  to  keep  it  moist ;  that  keeps 
down  inflammation,  pain,  mortification,  and  death.  To  do  this, 
a  plain  milk-and-bread  poultice  is  the  best,  being  accessible, 


INSTINCT  OF  APPETITE.  317 

simple,  and  safe — to  say  nothing  of  the  advantage  it  has 
over  many  others,  that  it  may  be  so  readily  remoistened,  and 
thus  cleaned  off. 


INSTINCT  OF  APPETITE. 

• 

OBSERVANT  farmers  know  that  one  kind  of  grain  or  seed, 
or  plant,  will  flourish  luxuriantly  in  a  particular  field,  while 
another  in  that  same  field  will  grow  feebly,  and  fail  to  arrive 
at  perfection ;  it  is  because  the  soil  in  the  former  instance 
contains  an  element  which  nourishes  the  thriving  plant,  and 
in  the  latter  case  it  is  deficient  in  that  element  which  is  the 
life  of  the  sickly  growth,  and  yet  there  is  nothing  amiss  in  the 
soil  or  in  the  seed — simply  a  want  of  adaptation.  So,  in 
the  case  of  a  mother  and  her  new-born  child ;  both  may  be  in 
ordinary  good  health,  and  yet  the  child  dwindles  and  dies, 
not  because  there  is  essential  disease  in  either,  but  because 
there  is  want  of  mutual  adaptation.  In  a  few  days  there  may 
be  a  change,  and  all  is  right.  But  it  is  interesting  to  remark 
the  wisdom  of  Omnipotence  in  implanting  an  instinct  for  the 
child's  safety,  and  it  refuses  to  take  the  breast;  or,  if  intense 
hunger  impels  it,  it  is  done  unwillingly,  and  nature  may,  to 
some  extent,  be  conquered,  and  the  infant  may  come  to  toler- 
ate what  it  could  not  welcome  ;  but  it  will  die,  for  all  that. 
Another  parallel  in  agriculture  is,  that  for  a  number  of 
years  a  field  will  give  abundant  crops  of  a  particular  grain, 
but  after  a  while  they  become  less  and  less  bountiful  under 
the  same  culture,  and  finally  there  is  a  total  failure.  In  like 
manner,  many  of  us  have  observed  in  our  own  persons,  that 
for  a  long  time  we  had  a  hearty  relish  for  a  particular  kind  of 
food  ;  it  almost  seemed  that  we  could  never  eat  enough  of  it ; 
but  in  process  of  time  the  expression  escapes  us,  "I  don't 
care  anything  about  it  now ;  "  in  some  instances  there  is  a 
positive  aversion. 

We  constantly  notice,  at  our  own  table,  that  a  child  will  be 
ravenousl}'  fond  of  a  particular  dish,  and  after  a  while  turns 
from  it.  The  reason  is,  that  there  was  a  constituent  in  the 
uiuch-loved  food  which  the  system  required,  and  which  it 


318  INSTINCT  OF  APPETITE. 

drank  up  greedily  until  it  was  fully  supplied,  and  then  in- 
stinct would  receive  no  more.  A  thirsty  man,  like  the  arid 
soil,  drinks  in  the  water  until  the  one  is  full  and  the  other  is 
saturated,  and  then  the  water  is  refused  or  rejected.  The  soil 
will  not  receive  it,  and  it  flows  off:  and  when  a  man  has 
enough,  he  becomes  nauseated  if  he  tries  to  drink  more.  To 
most  persons,  water  has  a  very  disagreeable  taste,  if  it  is  at- 
tempted to  be  forced. 

The  practical  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  these  facts  is 
simply  this :  Do  not  force  your  children  or  yourselves  to 
take  one  single  mouthful  of  any  food  or  drink  which  they  do 
not  like.  In  sickness  or  health,  consult  the  instincts  of  the 
appetite,  and  yield  to  them  implicit  and  instant  obedience. 
There  is  sometimes  a  morbid  appetite,  and  if  indulged  in 
freely,  injurious,  if  not  fatal  effects  may  follow ;  but  in  the 
most  of  these  cases  even,  we  prefer  to  believe  that  it  is  the 
quantity  which  does  the  harm,  and  not  the  quality :  so  that 
we  are  in  the  habit  of  saying  to  some  classes  of  dyspeptics, 
"  Eat  what  you  most  crave  ;  but  if  you  find  that  it  is  uniform- 
ly followed  by  some  disagreeable  feeling,  instead  of  discard- 
ing that  article  of  food,  take  half  as  much  next  time,  and  con- 
tinue to  diminish  the  quantity  until  it  is  found  out  how  much 
of  its  favorite  dish  nature  can  take  with  perfect  impunity ;  if 
a  spoonful  only  can  be  taken  with  perfect  impunity,  give 
nature  that  spoonful  as  long  as  she  craves  it." 

Most  of  us  can  call  to  mind  cases  where  a  craved  dish  or 
drink  was  most  imperatively  forbidden,  under  fear  of  death, 
if  indulged  in  ;  and  yet  the  patient,  in  desperation,  has  gotten 
up  in  the  night,  satisfied  the  appetite,  and  recovered  from 
that  hour.  We  advise  the  safer  plan  :  take  a  very  little  at  a 
time  of  what  is  so  earnestly  craved,  and  gradually  feel  the 
way  along  to  an  amount  which  nature  will  bear.  Physicians 
may  rest  assured  that  if  the  instincts  of  the  invalid  and  the 
convalescent  were  more  closely  observed  and  studied,  they 
would  be  more  successful,  with  less  medicine. 


SELF-DESTROYERS.  319 


SELF-DESTROYERS. 

WE  do  not  hold  the  drunkard  guiltless,  who  by  his  infirmi- 
ty has  disabled  himself,  disgraced  his  friends,  and  beggared 
his  family.  The  convict  who  cut  off  his  right  hand  in  order 
to  avoid  work,  is  not  excused  from  labor,  but  receives  our 
reprobation ;  and  if,  by  any  form  of  inconsideration  or  reck- 
lessness, we  bring  on  ourselves  an  incapacity  for  performing 
the  duties  of  life  which  devolve  upon  us,  we  are  responsible 
for  their  discharge  towards  the  party  to  whom  those  duties 
belong. 

A  clergyman  of  talent  and  culture,  in  the  very  prime  of 
life,  advertises  that  being  by  ill  health  incapable  of  perform- 
ing ministerial  duty,  he  is  willing  to  do  almost  anything  for  a 
moderate  compensation ;  he  is  ready  to  preach  an  occasional 
sermon,  prepare  an  essay,  write  an  editorial,  copy  papers, 
read  proof,  prepare  manuscripts  for  the  press,  keep  books, 
deliver  lectures,  teach  school,  give  lessons  in  elocution,  read- 
ing, or  speaking  —  in  any  of  which  ways  he  hopes  he  might 
give  satisfaction,  and  would  do  his  best  to  please.  We  have 
no  reason  to  question  this  gentleman's  ability  for  any  of  these 
offices,  and  do  certainly  regret,  when  in  our  own  country 
there  are  thousands  of  persons,  singly  and  in  whole  commu- 
nities, who  do  not  hear  a  gospel  sermon  in  a  year,  that  one  so 
competent  should  be  disabled.  But  to  use  a  common  phrase, 
he  has  no  business  to  be  sick.  In  other  words,  his  being  a  sick 
man  is  not  a  necessity,  most  likely.  People  do  not  get  sick 
without  a  cause,  except  in  rare  cases  ;  and  that  cause  is,  very 
generally,  within  themselves,  resulting  from  inattention,  igno- 
rance, or  recklessness,  either  on  the  part  of  parents,  teachers, 
or  themselves.  It  is  a  very  poor  excuse  for  a  man  to  say 
that  he  cannot  pay  a  debt  —  the  declaration  becomes  insulting 
to  the  creditor  when  that  inability  is  the  result  of  improvi- 
dence or  actual  extravagance.  When  any  man  is  disabled  by 
sickness  from  discharging  his  duty  to  himself,  his  family,  or 
society,  the  question  should  at  once  be,  is  it  from  Heaven  or 
of  men?  Not  of  the  former  ;  for  it  is  said,  He  does  not  will- 
ingly afflict  the  children  of  men  :  consequently  sickness  is  not 


320  SOW  MUCH   TO  SLEEP. 

of  His  sending.  It  is  the  result  of  causes  within  ourselves. 
In  a  literal  sense,  as  well  as  a  moral,  it  is  true  :  WO  Israel ! 
thou  hast  destroyed  thyself!"  In  plainer  terms,  disease  is 
not  sent  upon  us ;  we  bring  it  on  ourselves  —  and  health  is  a 
duty. 


HOW  MUCH  TO   SLEEP. 

THE  amount  of  sleep  which  persons  require  varies  with  the 
age,  habits,  and  conditions  of  men. 

If  we  will  yield  to  nature's  guidance,  instinct  wilt  desig- 
nate the  exact  quantity  required  for  each,  with  promptitude 
and  accuracy.  All  know  that  a  night's  full  natural  sleep  gives 
an  awaking  of  freshness  and  vigor,  which  insures  bodily  enjoy- 
ment for  a  whole  day;  but  if  sleep  is  broken  and  disturbed, 
it  is  certainly  followed  by  lassitude  of  body  and  mind  :  this 
palpable  fact  demonstrates  that  body  and  brain,  flesh  and 
spirit,  are  recuperated  by  sleep  ;  it  then  follows  that  the  more 
we  work,  the  more  we  study,  the  more  sleep  we  require.  To 
ascertain  how  much  sleep  each  one  needs,  we  will  give  a  rule 
presently  ;  but  it  is  useful  to  know  that  nature  will  not  take 
too  much  sleep,  except  by  violent  and  artificial  means  :  if 
forced  upon  her  long,  obesity,  or  other  form  of  destructive 
disease,  is  inevitable  ;  but  if  we  attempt  to  rob  the  body  of 
its  requisite  amount,  debility  of  body,  madness  of  mind,  or 
premature  death  will  always  result  if  this  violence  is  perse- 
vered in.  There  are  persons  whose  voraciousness  of  time  is 
such,  that  they  consider  that  the  hours  spent  in  sleep,  beyond 
the  briefest  number,  are  hours  lost ;  that  if  they  can  go  to 
bed  very  late  and  get  up  very  early,  it  is  so  much  added  to 
life.  We  once  heard  a  man  say  that  no  time  should  be  lost ; 
that  a  book  should  be  always  at  hand,  so  that  in  waiting  for 
dinner  or  a  friend  we  might  read,  even  if  it  were  but  a  line. 
He  practised  this.  His  was  accounted  one  of  the  greatest 
minds  in  the  nation  ;  his  writings, will  live  when  the  names  of 
Presidents  will  be  repeated  but  once  in  an  age.  He  lost  his 
mind,  and  died  in  his  prime  !  The  truly  wise  will,  therefore, 
yield  themselves  to  nature's  apportionment.  It  is  a  law  of 


SCHOOL  DANGERS.  321 

our  being,  as  beneficent  as  it  is  wise,  that  if  we  are  let  alone 
we  wake  up  of  ourselves,  as  soon  as  the  system  has  taken  an 
amount  of  repose  proportioned  to  the  exertions  of  the  pre- 
vious day,  and  the  usual  ones  of  the  day  following.  All  that 
remains,  therefore,  for  us  to  do,  is  to  aid  nature  in  the  outset, 
or  rather  avoid  acting  in  such  a  way  as  to  interfere  with  her 
operations,  by  simply  going  to  bed  at  a  regular  hour,  with  a 
mind,  and  body,  and  stomach  unoppressed  with  the  cares  and 
labors  and  food  of  the  preceding  day,  and  to  arise  in  the 
morning  as  soon  as  we  wake  up  of  ourselves,  not  sleeping  a 
moment  in  the  daytime.  It  is  scarcely  possible  for  any  one 
to  pursue  this  course  rigidly,  if  in  moderate  health,  without 
in  a  week  or  two  usually  securing  the  following  delightful 
results :  an  ability  to  go  to  sleep  within  a  few  moments  of 
laying  the  head  upon  the  pillow  ;  of  sleeping  soundly  all  night 
and  of  waking  up  refreshed,  within  a  very  few  minutes  of  the 
same  time  for  weeks  together,  giving  us  perhaps  an  hour 
more  in  midwinter  than  in  summer  time,  because  the  mind 
and  body,  and  digestion  are  more  vigorous  in  winter,  when 
nature  favors  us  by  giving  longer  nights. 


SCHOOL  DANGERS. 

MANY  girls  and  boys  of  promise,  the  great  hope  of  life 
to  yearning  parents,  are  sacrificed  every  year  to  the  cu- 
pidity of  sordid,  stupid,  or  reckless  school-teachers,  aided 
and  abetted  by  the  contemptible  vanity  of  the  thoughtless 
parents  themselves.  We  regard  public  examinations  and 
school  exhibitions  a  cheat  and  a  sham  in  three  cases  out  of 
four.  It  is  done  for  the  benefit  and  behoof  of  the  teacher, 
and  to  the  irreparable  injury  of  the  schoolar ;  while  the  poor 
dolt  of  a  parent  has  not  sense  enough  to  see  through  it.  We 
hope  never  to  see  a  child  of  ours  competitor  for  any  prize  or 
station  at  school. 

Not  long  since  a  gentleman  of  wealth,  from  the  east,  con- 
sulted us  in  behalf  of  an  only  child,  a  daughter  of  seventeen, 
at  school.  She  was  expected  to  complete  her  studies  at  an 
academy  in  two  months.  Already  she  had  been  preparing  for 


322  SCHOOL  DANGERS. 

an  examination  for  some  weeks.  The  report  was,  that  she 
was  so  much  "  interested "  in  her  studies  that  she  barely  al- 
lowed herself  necessary  sleep ;  that  she  always  ate  in  haste, 
and  went  to  her  books  immediately  after  her  meals.  She  had 
all  the  symptoms  of  a  commencing  decliue,  and  she  was  de- 
termined to  "  keep  up  "  until  the  close  of  the  session.  Those 
two  months  seemed  to  us  an  interminable  age  ahead.  We 
felt  as  if  she  ought  to  have  been  hurried  out  of  the  school- 
room without  an  hour's  delay,  and  driven  out  among  the 
beautiful  hills  of  her  own  New  England,  and  scarcely  allowed 
time  out  of  the  saddle  to  take  her  meals ;  we  felt  as  if  she 
ought  to  have  been  compelled  to  eat  most  of  her  meals  on 
horseback.  But  the  gratification  which  was  to  result  to  her 
from  a  successful  examination  outweighed  all  considerations 
of  the  happiness  of  healthful  youth.  We  declined  giving 
special  advice  while  she  was  at  school.  We  have  no  doubt 
that  the  reaction  which  will  take  place  after  the  examination 
will,  with  her  previous  condition,  send  her  to  an  early  grave 
—  as  it  has  done  in  multitudes  of  similar  cases  before.  Par- 
ents ought  to  remember  that  reviewing  studies  for  an  exami- 
nation is  for  the  glorification  of  the  teacher,  without  any  com- 
mensurate advantage  to  the  scholar. 

A  young  lady,  the  hope  of  a  widowed  mother,  and  both 
poor,  wrote  only  in  June  last,  that  she  was  at  school  prepar- 
ing herself  as  a  teacher,  with  a  view  to  support  herself  and 
mother,  by  obtaining  a  position  in  the  school  of  which  she 
was  then  only  a  scholar ;  but,  in  order  to  do  that,  it  was  ne- 
cessary that  her  examination  should  entitle  her  to  a  diploma. 
How  long  and  how  hard  she  had  been  striving,  we  do  not 
know ;  but  the  struggle  had  been  so  severe,  the  tension  so 
great  and  continued,  that  she  writes,  "  A  weakness  and 
drowsiness  has  come  over  me,  from  which  I  cannot  arouse 
myself,  and  causes  me  almost  to  despair  of  recovery.  Mere 
talking  is  a  weariness.  It  seems  as  if  I  shall  never  feel  wide 
awake  again.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  sleep  forever.  This  sleepi- 
ness is  experienced,  not  only  at  noon  and  at  night,  but  also 
in  the  early  morning.  Having  always  ranked  first  in  my 
classes  at  school,  I  have  endeavored,  the  present  year,  to 
maintain  my  position  ;  but  I  feel  that  my  health  is  not  equal 
to  the  task.  It  seems  that  the  faculties  of  my  mind  are  not 


HYDROPHOBIA.  323 

what  they  once  were,  especially  my  memory.  The  time  is 
drawing  near  when  the  diplomas  will  be  awarded  to  our 
class.  The  apprehension  of  a  failure,  on  my  part,  weighs 
heavily  on  my  mind ;  and  fail  I  must,  unless  I  can  be  aroused 
from  my  stupid  state.  The  very  efforts  I  make  to  keep  my- 
self awake  in  the  daytime  often  makes  me  sick  at  heart." 

Here  is  a  case  of  a  young  brain  stimulated  to  sheer  ex- 
haustion, while  all  the  powers  of  life  were  failing  with  it. 
Out  upon  it,  we  say.  Let  the  barbarous  customs  of  the 
school-room  be  abolished ;  and  let  parents  and  teachers  un- 
derstand, that  education  can  be  so  conducted  as  to  make  it  a 
self-buoyant  process,  from  the  commencement  of  the  alphabet 
to  its  successful  close.  Really  competent  teachers  can  make 
it  a  delight,  instead  of  a  burden  and  a  bore  —  can  make  it 
the  meat  and  drink  of  those  who  learn.  These  are  practical 
teachers,  and  deserve  treble  salaries,  with  the  respect  and 
thanks  of  all  the  humane. 


HYDROPHOBIA. 

HYDROPHOBIA  follows  the  bite  of  various  animals,  but  more 
frequently  that  of  a  dog.  There  are  two  errors  generally 
prevalent  in  reference  to  this  most  fearful  of  all  diseases, 
which  merit  correction. 

Hydrophobia  is  almost  as  frequent  an  occurrence  outside 
of  the  "  dog-days,"  as  during  that  period ;  and  second,  mad 
dogs  are  not  always  afraid  of  the  water,  nor  do  they  always 
exhibit  a  furious  manner.  The  more  certain  signs  of  their 
being  rabid  are  an  unsteady  walk,  a  haggard  appearance, 
and  an  extraordinary  and  striking  wildness  in  the  expression 
of  the  eye.  We,  therefore,  most  earnestly  advise  that  when- 
ever a  person  is  bitten  by  any  dog,  even  to  the  extent  of  the 
smallest  scratch,  whether  in  summer  or  winter,  to  saturate  a 
rag  instantly  with  common  spirits  of  hartshorn  and  sop  it  on 
the  wound  for  at  least  half  an  hour,  on  the  principle  that  all 
bites  and  stings  owe  their  injurious  effects  to  their  acid 
nature,  and  hartshorn,  being  one  of  the  strongest,  simplest, 
and  most  accessible  alkalies,  is  the  most  practicable  auti- 


324  THE  STOMACH.    ' 

dote  in  Nature ;  the  sooner  it  is  applied,  the  more  certain 
•will  be  the  success.  The  next  most  accessible  thing  to  the 
same  nature  is  the  liquor  resulting  from  a  cup  of  hot  water 
poured  on  a  handful  of  fresh  ashes  of  wood. 


THE  STOMACH. 

THE  stomach  is  the  source  of  a  very  large  share  of  our 
animal  enjoyment,  if  treated  properly ;  but  if  allowed  to  fall 
into  disease,  life  is  rendered  miserable,  in  spite  of  all  the 
advantages  that  wealth  or  station  can  bestow.  Eating  largely 
and  late,  is  the  most  common  cause  of  the  long  catalogue  of 
neuralgias  and  dyspepsias  which  everywhere  prevail,  more  or 
less,  and  are  increasing  in  frequency. 

As  the  day  closes,  we  all  become  weary,  and  the  body  yearns 
for  the  repose  and  rest  which  only  the  quiet  chamber  can  fully 
give.  The  whole  system  is  weak, —  feet,  fingers,  arms,  every- 
thing. There  is  not  a  muscle  in  the  body  which  does  not 
participate  in  that  tiredness.  The  stomach  is  a  collection  of 
muscles,  and  these  are  called  to  work  at  each  meal ;  and  to 
dispose  of  that  meal  is  a  work  of  four  or  five  hours.  The 
more  that  is  eaten,  the  more  work  has  to  be  performed.  Any 
one  can  see,  then,  the  striking  absurdity  of  giving  an  already 
weak  stomach  four  or  five  hours'  work  to  do  at  the  close  of 
the  day  —  of  giving  rest  to  the  body  by  sleep,  and  yet  keep- 
ing the  stomach  hard  at  work  until  nearly  daylight.  Its 
repose  then  is  the  repose  of  exhaustion,  and  it  does  not  wake 
up  for  breakfast,  any  more  than  the  body  would,  if  kept  out 
of  bed  long  past  midnight.  Not  being  waked  up,  it  does  not 
call  for  food,  and  there  is  no  appetite  (no  "  seekiug,"  as  the 
word  literally  means)  for  food. 

But  another  result  follows  from  a  hearty  supper,  or  a  very 
late  dinner :  the  digestion  of  the  food  requires  a  large  amount 
of  nervous  power,  leaving  the  other  parts  of  the  system  to  the 
same  extent  deficient  of  their  natural  supply,  the  brain  in  com- 
mon with  the  others ;  hence,  no  one  can  sleep  soundly  and 
refreshingly  after  a  hearty  meal. 

More  than  this,  if  a  large  meal  be  taken  at  the  close  of  the 


TEA  AND  COFFEE.  325 

day,  when  the  body  is  weary,  tired  out,  the  stomach  not  only 
requires  an  extra  amount  of  nervous  power,  which  must  be 
supplied  at  the  expense  of  the  other  parts  of  the  system,  but 
it  requires,  also,  an  extra  supply  of  heat,  which  must  be  sup- 
plied in  the  same  way  —  and  the  stomach  will  have  it,  what- 
ever mischief  may  result  to  other  parts  of  the  body  —  leaving 
the  body  chilly ;  which,  in  its  severest  forms,  is  called  in  the 
south  a  congestive  chill,  where  the  engorgement  of  blood  is 
so  great  as  to  oppress  the  powers  of  life,  and  a  stupor  pervades 
the  whole  frame,  out  of  which  it  never  fully  wakes  up  again, 
except,  perhaps,  for  a  single  gleam  at  a  time  of  partial  con- 
sciousness. 

Hence  the  impropriety,  at  all  times,  of  going  out  into  the 
cold  air,  or  taking  a  cold  bath  immediately  after  a  hearty  meal, 
if  the  person  is  at  all  weakly,  or  is  in  a  tired  condition ;  for 
the  chilliness  is  only  increased  thereby,  and  a  fatal  result  is 
the  more  likely  to  ensue.  A  thousand  times  better  would  it 
be  for  this  whole  land,  if  not  an  atom  of  food  was  ever  allowed 
to  pass  adult  lips  at  a  later  hour  than  five  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon. Such  a  practice,  habitually  and  literally  adhered  to, 
would  save  more  lives  every  year  than  are  destroyed  by  steam, 
and  sea,  and  all  wars  together. 


TEA  AND  COFFEE. 

TAKING  into  account  the  habits  of  the  people,  tea  and  coffee, 
for  supper  and  breakfast,  add  to  human  health  and  life,  if  a 
single  cup  be  taken  at  either  meal,  and  is  never  increased  in 
strength,  frequency,  or  quantity.  If  they  were  mere  stim- 
ulants, and  were  taken  thus  in  moderation  and  with  uniformity, 
they  would,  in  time,  become  either  inert,  or  the  system  would 
become  so  habituated  to  their  employment,  as  to  remain  in  the 
same  relative  position  to  them  as  if  they  had  never  been 
used ;  and,  consequently,  as  to  themselves,  they  had  better 
never  have  been  used,  as  they  are  so  liable  to  abuse.  But 
science  and  fact  unite  in  declaring  them  to  be  nutritious,  as 
well  as  stimulant;  hence,  they  will  do  a  new  good  to  the 
system  every  day,  to  the  end  of  life,  just  as  bread  and  fruits 


326  TEA  AND   COFFEE. 

do  ;  hence,  we  never  get  tired  of  either.  But  the  use  of  bread 
and  fruits  are  daily  abused  by  multitudes,  and  dyspepsia  and 
cholera  morbus  result  ;  yet  we  ought  not  to  forego  their  em- 
ployment on  that  account,  nor  should  we  forego  the  use  of  tea 
and  coffee  because  their  inordinate  use  gives  neuralgias  and 
other  ailments. 

But  the  habitual  use  of  tea  and  coffee,  at  the  last  and  first 
meals  of  the  day,  has  another  high  advantage,  is  productive  of 
incalculable  good  in  the  way  of  averting  evils. 

We  will  drink  at  our  meals,  and  if  we  do  not  drink  these, 
we  will  drink  what  is  worse  —  cold  water,  milk,  or  alcoholic 
mixtures.  The  regular  use  of  these  last  will  lead  the  young 
to  drunkenness  ;  the  considerable  employment  of  simple  milk, 
at  meals,  by  sedentary  people,  —  by  all,  except  the  robust,  — 
will  either  constipate,  or  render  bilious  ;  while  cold  water 
largely  used,  that  is,  to  the  extent  of  a  glass  or  two  at  a  meal, 
especially  in  cold  weather,  attracts  to  itself  so  much  of  the 
heat  of  the  system,  in  raising  said  water  to  the  temperature  of 
the  body  —  about  one  hundred  degrees  —  that  the  process  of 
digestion  is  arrested  ;  in  the  mean  while  giving  rise  to  a 
deathly  sickness  of  stomach,  to  twisting  pains,  to  vomitings, 
purgings,  and  even  to  cramps,  to  fearful  contortions,  and  sud- 
den death  ;  which  things  would  have  been  averted,  had  even 
the  same  amount  of  liquid,  in  the  shape  of  simple  hot  water, 
been  used.  But  any  one  knowing  these  things,  and  being 
prejudiced  against  the  use  of  tea  and  coffee,  would  subject 
himself  to  be  most  unpleasantly  stared  at  and  questioned,  if 
not  ridiculed,  were  he  to  ask  for  a  cup  or  glass  of  hot  water. 
But,  as  tea  and  coffee  are  now  universal  beverages,  are  on 
every  table,  and  everybody  is  expected  to  take  one  or  the 
other  as  a  matter  of  course,  they  are  unwittingly  the  means 
of  safety  and  of  life  to  multitudes.  They  save  life,  where  a 
glass  of  cold  water  would  have  destroyed  it.  So  that  the  use 
of  these  beverages  is  not  merely  allowable,  it  is  politic,  it  is  a 
necessity. 


VEGETARIANISM  AND  ILL-TEMPER  327 


VEGETARIANISM  AND  ILL-TEMPER. 

SOLOMON  was  a  great  lover  of  beefsteak ;  and  when  he 
wanted  a  fit  comparison  with  one  of  the  meanest  and  lowest 
traits  of  our  nature,  to  wit,  a  bad  temper,  he  compares  it  to 
a  vegetable  dinner !  saying,  that  even  a  "  dinner  of  herbs," 
with  love  and  affection,  was  preferable  to  the  most  splendid 
table,  marred  with  the  presence  of  ill-nature.  As  writers  of 
note  are  found,  sooner  or  later,  to  have  treated  of  things 
coming  under  their  own  experience  and  observation,  we  can- 
not resist  the  conclusion  that  Solomon  had  a  n  tartar "  in  his 
household.  Other  Solomons  have  the  same.  Steele  had 
some  experiences  of  a  growling,  grumbling  ill-nature,  and 
seems  to  have  had  a  woman  in  his  eye,  when  he  declared, 
"  A  bad  temper  is  a  cur^^to  the  possessor.  To  hear  one 
eternal  round  of  complaint  and  murmuring,  to  have  every 
pleasant  thought  scared  away  by  this  evil  spirit,  is  a  sore 
trial.  It  is  like  the  sting  of  a  scorpion,  a  perpetual  nettle, 
destroying  your  peace,  rendering  life  a  burden.  Its  influence 
is  deadly.  The  purest  and  sweetest  atmosphere  is  converted 
into  a  deadly  miasm  wherever  this  evil  genius  prevails.  It  is 
allied  to  martyrdom,  to  be  obliged  to  live  with  one  of  a  com- 
plaining temper.  One  string  out  of  tune  Avill  destroy  the 
music  of  an  instrument  otherwise  perfect.  So  if  all  the  mem- 
bers of  a  family  do  not  cultivate  a  kind  and  affectionate 
temper,  there  will  be  discord,  and  every  evil  work."  Solomon 
and  Steele  evidently  had  their  eye  on  the  family  relation. 
O,  the  curse,  the  living  martyrdom  of  having  one  member  in 
a  household,  whose  low-bred  nature,  exhibiting  itself  in  every 
hour  of  waking  existence,  clouds  the  brow  of  the  parent, 
petrifies  the  glad  smile  of  childhood,  fixes  a  stern  hatred  on 
the  heart  of  the  servant,  and  fills  the  breast  of  the  guest,  or 
stranger,  with  sadness  and  inexpressible  contempt ! 

In  the  estimation  of  the  wisest  of  men,  the  distance  between 
a  dinner  of  beefsteak  and  vegetables  was  almost  immeasurable ; 
but,  between  vegetables  with  loviugness,  and  a  splendid 
repast  with  a  carping  grumbling  nature,  there  could  be  no 
comparison,  and  he  gladly  chose  the  former.  Let,  then,  the 


328  FOOD   CURE. 

snarling  curs,  fortunately  met  with  only  here  and  there,  make 
a  note  of  this,  if  they  can  but  know  their  picture  ;  and  remem- 
ber, that  to  see  no  beauty  in  any  flower,  to  feel  no  warmth  in 
any  sunshine,  to  draw  no  lovingness  from  any  smile,  is,  of  all 
temperaments,  the  most  to  be  pitied,  the  worst  to  be  feared. 


FOOD  CUKE. 

THIS  book  aims  to  show  how  to  maintain  health  by  natural 
agencies,  and  by  the  same  means  to  restore  it  if  lost.  It  is 
not  pretended  that  all  diseases  are  cured  in  this  way  ;  but  it  is 
very  certain  that  quite  a  number  of  ordinary  ailments  may  be 
removed  by  the  judicious  employment  of  the  contents  of  a 
well-furnished  larder ;  and  with  this  great  advantage,  the 
cures  are  more  permanent,  and  less  liable  to  return,  —  ac- 
complishing their  object  without  any  shock  to  the  system,  and 
without  the  danger  of  killing  the  patient,  by  mistaking  the 
quantity,  or  quality,  or  name  of  the  dose. 

Ripe  fruits  and  berries,  slightly  acid,  will  remove  the  ordi- 
nary diarrhoeas  of  early  summer. 

Common  rice,  parched  brown  like  coffee,  and  then  boiled 
and  eaten  in  the  ordinary  way,  without  any  other  food,  is, 
with  perfect  quietude  of  body,  one  of  the  most  effective  rem- 
edies for  troublesome  looseness  of  bowels. 

Some  of  the  severest  forms  of  that  distressing  ailment 
called  dysentery,  that  is,  when  the  bowels  pass  blood,  with 
constant  desire,  yet  vain  efforts  to  stool,  are  sometimes 
entirely  cured  by,  the  patient  eating  a  heaping  tablespoon,  at  a 
time,  of  ra«v  beef,  cut  up  very  fine,  and  repeated  at  intervals 
of  four  houfts,  until  cured,  eating  and  drinking  nothing  else  in 
the  meanwhile.  . 

If  a  person  swallows  any  poison  whatever,  or  has  fallen  into 
convulsions  ftt>m  Saving  overloaded  the  stomach,  an  instanta- 
neous remedy,  more  efficient  and  applicable  in  a  larger  num- 
ber of  cases  than  any  half  a  dozen  medicines  we  can  now  think 
of,  is  a  heaping  teaspoon  of  common  salt  and  as  much  ground 
mustard,  stirred  rapidly  in  a  teacup  of  water,  warm  or  cold, 
and  swallowed  instantly.  It  is  scarcely  down  before  it  begins 


: 


FOOD  CUBE.  329 

to  come  up,  bringing  with  it  the  remaining  contents  of  the 
stomach ;  and  lest  there  be  any  remnant  of  a  poison,  however 
small,  let  the  white  of  an  egg,  or  a  teacup  of  strong  coffee,  be 
swallowed  as  soon  as  the  stomach  is  quiet ;  because  these  very 
common  articles  nullify  a  larger  number  of  virulent  poisons 
than  any  medicines  in  the  shops. 

In  case  of  scalding  or  burning  the  body,  immersing  the  part 
in  cold  water  gives  entire  relief,  as  instantaneously  as  the 
lightning.  Meanwhile  get  some  common  dry  flour,  and  ap- 
ply it  an  inch  or  two  thick  on  the  injured  part  the  moment  it 
emerges  from  the  water,  and  keep  sprinkling  on  the  flour 
through  anything  like  a  pepper-box  cover,  so  as  to  put  it  on 
evenly.  Do  nothing  else,  drink  nothing  but  water,  eat  noth- 
ing, until  improvement  commences,  except  some  dry  bread 
softened  in  very  weak  tea  of  some  kind.  Cures  of  frightful 
burnings  have  been  performed  in  this  way,  as  wonderful  as 
they  are  painless. 

Erysipelas,  a  disease  often  coming  without  premonition,  and 
ending  fatally  in  three  or  four  days,  is  sometimes  promptly 
cured  by  applying  a  poultice  of  raw  cranberries,  pounded,  and 
placed  on  the  part  over  night. 

Insect  bites,  and  even  that  of  a  rattlesnake,  have  passed 
harmless,  by  stirring  enough  of  common  salt  in  the  yolk  of  a 
good  egg  to  make  it  sufficiently  thin  for  a  plaster,  to  be  kept 
on  the  bitten  parts. 

Neuralgia  and  toothache  are  sometimes  speedily  relieved  by 
applying  to  the  wrist  a  quantity  of  bruised  or  grated  horse- 
radish. 

Costive  bowels  have  an  agreeable  remedy  in  the  free  use 
of  tomatoes  at  meals  —  their  seeds  acting  in  the  way  of  the 
seeds  of  white  mustard  or  figs,  by  stimulating  the  coats  of  the 
bowels  over  which  they  pass,  in  their  whole  state,  to  increased 
action. 

A  remedy  of  equal  efficiency,  in  the  same  direction,  is 
cracked  wheat  —  that  is,  common  white  wheat  grains,  broken 
into  two  or  three  pieces,  and  then  boiled  until  it  is  as  soft  as 
rice,  and  eaten  mainly  at  two  meals  of  the  day,  with  butter  or 
molasses. 

Common  sweet  cider,  boiled  down  to  one  half,  makes  a 
most  excellent  syrup  for  coughs  and  colds  for  children  —  is 


330  MAKE   YOURSELF  USEFUL. 

pleasant  to  the  taste,  and  will  keep  throughout  the  year  in 
a  cool  cellar. 

In  recovering  from  an  illness,  the  system  has  a  craving  for 
some  pleasant  acid  drink.  This  is  found  in  cider  which  is 
placed  on  the  fire  as  soon  as  made,  and  allowed  to  come  to  a 
boil,  then  cooled,  put  in  casks,  and  kept  in  a  cool  cellar. 
Treated  thus,  it  remains  for  many  months  as  good  as  the  day 
it  was  made. 

We  once  saved  the  life  of  an  infant  which  had  been  inad- 
vertently drugged  with  laudanum,  and  was  fast  sinking  into 
the  sleep  which  has  no  awaking,  by  giving  it  strong  coffee, 
cleared  with  the  white  of  an  egg,  a  teaspoonful  every  five 
minutes,  until  it  ceased  to  seem  drowsy. 

Our  book  on  "  Health  and  Disease  "  was  written  with  a 
view  to  introduce  people  to  the  knowledge  of  items  like  these, 
in  the  hope  of  doing  something  towards  abolishing  the  ruinous 
and  almost  universal  habit  of  purchasing  patent  medicines, 
which,  in  so  many  instances,  are  either  inapplicable,  hurtful, 
or  utterly  useless,  and,  in  this  latter  case,  are  indirectly  the 
means  of  death,  by  the  loss  of  time  in  obtaining  the  services 
of  a  competent  physician  to  apply  the  proper  means  with  a 
wise  discrimination. 


MAKE  YOURSELF  USEFUL. 

THIS  is  the  standing  injunction  to  a  large  family  of  steady 
and  affectionate  children,  of  a  "Friend"  mother,  whom  we 
know,  and  we  regard  it  as  one  of  the  most  important  les- 
sons which  childhood  can  learn.  Many  a  young  man  would 
have  been  saved  from  the  halter,  had  he  learned  in  his  father's 
house  how  to  "  make  himself  useful "  under  all  the  circum- 
stances of  life.  And  well  do  we  know,  that  many  a  girl  with 
a  good  heart  has  gone  down  to  an  early  grave  of  infamy, 
from  being  brought  up,  by  a  false  kindness,  without  the 
knowledge  of  how  she  was  to  "  make  herself  useful  "  in  the 
various  changes  and  adversities  of  life.  Very  many  girls,  in 
this  drear  winter  weather,  go  to  bed  hungry,  and  rise  to 
hover  around  stinted  fires,  and  shiver  all  day  in  scanty  cloth- 


TOMBOYS.  331 

ing,  wearing  the  wrinkles  of  sadness  and  care  on  faces  yet  in 
their  teens,  willing  enough  to  work  —  and  abundant  work  to 
do,  with  liberal  pay,  in  luxurious  mansions,  whose  rich  oc- 
cupants would  count  it  a  "  fortunate  thing  "  to  find  a  person 
suited  to  the  place. 

Why,  then,  are  the  doors  of  all  our  charities  besieged  and 
daily  thronged?  and  why  does  the  pitiful  appeal  strike  the 
ear  of  the  pedestrian  in  his  early  walk,  or  noonday  promenade, 
or  nightly  visit  to  the  party,  the  lecture,  the  concert,  or  the 
opera  ? 

It  is  simply  because  these  starving,  freezing  girls  were  not 
brought  up  to  be  useful,  were  not  taught,  by  careless  or  over- 
indulgent  mothers,  how  they  might  command  situations. 
The  incessant  and  earnest  cry  of  thousands  of  almost  despair- 
ing housekeepers,  is  for  competent  "help,"  to  cook,  to  nurse, 
to  sew,  for  chamber  work,  or  for  waiting.  Within  any  twenty- 
four  hours,  two  thousand,  may  we  not  say  ten  thousand,  such 
girls  could  find  welcome  homes,  in  the  very  best  families  in 
New  York,  at  high  wages. 

But  American  girls  think  it  degrading  to  cook,  and  nurse, 
and  wash,  and  wait  on  the  table,  and  their  more  inexcusable 
and  short-sighted  parents  confirm  them  in  their  views ;  and 
the  next  we  hear  of  them  is  "  starvation,"  "  suicide,"  prema- 
ture disease^  or  a  dishonored  grave.  Let  all  these,  especially 
those  who  can  leave  their  families  nothing,  impress  on  the 
minds  of  their  children,  day  by  day,  that  it  is  more  dishonor- 
able to  beg  than  to  work ;  that  it  is  more  criminal  to  do  noth- 
ing than  to  be  industrious ;  that  no  employment  is  dishonor- 
able which  is  useful ;  and  that  it  is  not  only  a  disgrace,  but  a 
crime  to  be  idle,  from  feelings  of  a  despicable  false  pride. 


TOMBOYS. 

How  we  love  the  phrase !  How  it  carries  us  back  to  the 
good  old  times  when  girls  were  not  afraid  to  laugh  out  a  whole 
heart  at  once,  and  never  knew  anything  of  modern  "  pro- 
priety ; "  sanctity  before  folks,  satanity  behind  ;  angelic  in  the 
street,  animal  in  the  pantry,  and  in  the  study  asinine  1 


332  TOMBOYS. 

"  Tomboys  "  is  associated  in  our  mind  with  saleratus.  Sal- 
eratus  rises,  and  helps  to  rise ;  so  does  a  tomboy,  for  she  is 
so  full  of  romping  and  of  fun,  that,  with  her  joyous  nature  and 
her  unsuspicious  abandon,  she  fires  up  every  young  heart 
around  her,  and  makes  the  saddened  faces  of  the  old  beam 
with  the  subdued  but  sweet  smiles  of  the  memories  of  Auld 
Lang  Syne,  when  they  too  were  young. 

The  first  time  we  ever  saw  that  household  word,  "  Saleratus," 
was  when  we  were  just  beginning  to  take  lessons  in  "  Cor- 
derii,"  the  first  Latin  primer.  There  was  the  picture  of  an 
angel  broke  loose.  It  was  a  young  girl,  with  her  long  hair 
floating  back  in  the  breeze,  an  uncontrollable  joyousuess  in  her 
face,  and,  withal,  a  most  unsuspicious,  don't-care  look  about 
her;  she  was  not  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  but  between  the  two, 
in  mid-air  like,  as  if  she  had  taken  a  spring,  which  was  to  end 
in  a  somerset,  landing  her  right  side  up  ;  and  under  this  pic- 
ture was,  in  large  letters,  Sal  Eratus.  Our  first  impulse  was 
to  "translate  that."  "Sal,"  we  confidently  believed,  meant 
Sal,  and  "  Eratus  "  had  something  to  do  with  erring ;  so  we 
concluded  that  if  Sal  and  Erring  were  put  together,  it  would 
make,  in  plain  English,  "  Erring  Sal ;  "  and  that  somebody's 
daughter,  named  Sal,  would  very  probably,  if  she  "  cut  up  so," 
in  the  end  "  put  her  foot  in  it,"  that  is,  "  spoil  the  broth  ;"  or, 
in  other  words,  make  a  fool  of  herself;  which  means,  to  take 
her  pigs  to  a  poor  market ;  that  is  to  say,  would  come  out  at 
the  little  end  of  the  horn.  Will  any  spirit  about  us  vouchsafe 
an  ability  to  express  our  idea  in  more  courtly  phrase,  and 
better  adapted  to  the  modern  market?  For  we  ran  back  a 
moment  to  old  times  ;  and  their  associations  so  enveloped  us, 
that  we  were  "  possessed  "  of  old  words,  phrases,  comparisons, 
old  everything ;  specially  did  it  bring  to  our  mind,  of  how  we 
went  a  mqonshiny  night  to  a  prayer-meeting  in  the  country, 
with  Dr.  Clelland's  daughter,  and  how,  when  an  essay  was 
made  to  help  her  over  the  fence,  with  the  tip  end  of  a  gloved 
finger,  she  exclaimed,  "O,  get  out!"  and  laying  one  hand  on 
the  top  rail,  she  cleared  the  panel  at  a  bound  I  We  felt  mean 
for  a  whole  year. 

How  sigh  we  for  the  times  to  come  again,  when  for  a  girl  to 
laugh  outright,  to  clear  a  fence,  to  reach  the  saddle  at  a 
bound,  or  row  on  a  river,  or  gallop  alone  to  a  neighbor's,  five 


DISEASE  AND   CRIME.  333 

miles  and  back,  shall  be  considered  nothing  remarkable,  its 
"symptom"  being,  an  index  to  physical  health,  to  joyous 
good-nature,  and  possession  of  high  moral  and  physical  abil- 
ities. How  would  a  regiment  of  the  true  "tomboys"  of 
olden  times,  quartered  on  Gotham,  work  a  revolution  for  the 
better  in  mind  and  morals,  in  physical  elevation  and  mental 
power,  whose  influences  for  good  would  be  felt  for  generations  ! 


DISEASE  AND  CRIME. 

LIGHT  is  daily  coming  in  upon  the  world  of  mind,  and  by 
the  help  of  clearly  established  facts,  arguments  may  be  ad- 
duced, which  will  have  a  stronger  tendency  to  compel  men  to 
take  care  of  their  health  than  any  which  have  arisen  from 
conscience,  money,  or  duty  ;  that  is,  the  argument  of  Shame. 
Let  men  fully  understand  that  certain  bodily  affections  tend 
to  crime,  and  that  crime  thus  committed  confines  to  the  peni- 
tentiary, then  may  the  community  wake  up  more  fully  to  the 
sentiment,  "  Health  is  a  duty ; "  and,  therefore,  the  neglect 
of  its  preservation  a  sin,  which,  in  the  natural  progress  of 
things,  leads  to  loss  of  health,  and  life,  and  honor. 

In  a  recent  trial  of  a  forger,  who  handled  millions  of  dol- 
lars in  a  year's  business,  the  defence  was  that  he  was  insane. 
Among  the  evidence  offered  was,  that  he  could  sleep  only 
three  or  four  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four.  In  a  previous 
article  we  stated  that  a  growing  inability  to  sleep  was  a  clear 
indication  of  approaching  insanity,  and  on  the  return  of 
sleepfulness  the  intellect  became  clear.  There  were  other 
symptoms.  There  was  the  sound  of  trip-hammers  in  his  ears  ; 
blacksmiths'  sparks  floated  before  his  eyes,  and  there  was  pain 
in  the  head  a  large  portion  of  the  time.  These  symptoms, 
lasting  so  long,  had  at  length  so  affected  the  brain  as  to  de- 
stroy all  perception,  or  comprehension  of  the  effects  of  crime  ; 
and  when  the  organ  of  a  man's  perception  is  destroyed,  he 
will  plunge  headlong,  and  with  utter  recklessness,  into  any 
kind  of  wrong-doing  which  circumstances  throw  in  his  way 
—  arson,  robbery,  murder,  anything;  and,  if  not  detected  or 
prevented,  the  crime,  whatever  it  may  be,  will  grow  into  a 


334  DISEASE  AND   CRIME. 

habit,  and  habit  is  second  nature  ;  consequently  he  will  revel 
in  it ;  it  becomes  his  meat  and  drink,  and  he  would  rather  do 
it  than  not.  Hence  the  prisoner  declared,  without  hesitation, 
that  if  he  were  released  he  would  do  it  again ;  that  he  rather 
liked  it,  and  nothing  would  prevent  him  but  cutting  off  his 
hand,  if  it  came  in  the  way,  to  forge  paper. 

It  was  shown  on  the  trial  that  there  was  insanity  on  the 
father's  and  mother's  side,  but  no  indication  of  it  on  the  part 
of  either  father  or  mother.  It  is  well  known,  however,  that 
insanity,  as  well  as  personal  features,  overleaps  a  generation 
or  two.  Often  a  child  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  a 
grandparent,  without  a  lineament  of  parental  feature. 

The  acts  of  the  prisoner  were  admitted  by  his  counsel,  and 
the  question  of  guilt  or  innocence  rested  on  this  :  Was  he  in- 
sane or  not? 

The  use  which  we  wish  to  make  of  these  developments  is 
practical,  and  is  of  high  importance.  A  wise  and  stern  med- 
ical treatment  would  have  deferred,  if  not  prevented,  the 
combination  of  events.  And  how? 

The  prisoner  was  under  the  habitual  influence  of  constipa- 
tion, and  an  anodyne  which  intensified  this  constipation  every 
hour  ;  while  the  principle  of  the  medical  practice,  in  this  case, 
was  to  let  the  bowels  take  care  of  themselves  —  which  they 
did  not  do.  This  individual  was  never  seen  by  his  business 
associates  without  a  cigar  in  his  mouth  ;  he  smoked  fifteen  or 
twenty  a  day.  The  immediate  effect  of  smoking  tobacco  falls 
on  the  brain,  excites  it ;  during  that  excitement  he  could  not 
sleep,  and  the  reaction  went  so  low  that  he  could  not  sleep ; 
only  a  troubled  repose  was  possible  during  the  brief  transition 
from  one  to  the  other.  During  the  excitement,  the  brain  ran 
riot  in  the  direction  of  the  opportunity,  and  expended  its  en- 
ergies in  that  direction  ;  but  during  the  reaction,  power  was 
not  left  to  carry  on  the  bodily  functions. 

The  effect  of  constipation  is  to  thicken  the  blood,  to  make 
it  more  impure  ;  hence  more  unfit  for  healthful  purposes.  The 
more  impure  the  blood  is,  the  thicker  does  it  become,  the 
slower  is  its  progress,  and  if  nothing  is  done  to  alter  this 
state  of  things,  stagnation  and  death  take  place.  Stagnation 
means  accumulation  ;  for  the  moment  the  blood  stops  in  any 
part  of  the  body,  the  coming  current,  flowing  in,  causes  an 


DISEASE  AND   CHIME.  335 

accumulation,  precisely  as  in  the  closing  of  a  canal  gate,  or 
the  damming  up  of  a  stream.  This  accumulation  in  the  blood- 
vessels distends  them,  causes  them  to  occupy  more  room  than 
nature  designed ;  consequently  they  must  encroach  on  their 
neighbors.  The  neighbors  of  the  blood-vessels  are  the  nerves  ; 
hence  the  nerves  are  pressed  against ;  that  pressure  gives 
what  we  call  "  pain."  As  there  are  nerves  everywhere,  a 
point  of  a  needle  cannot  be  placed  against  the  surface  of  the 
body  without  some  pain,  which  shows  the  universality  of 
nerve  presence  ;  hence  we  may  have  pain  anywhere,  and  will 
have  pain  if  there  is  pressure.  This  accounts  for  the  steady 
pain  in  the  head.  The  excitement  of  the  day  sent  the  blood 
to  the  brain  too  fast,  the  repose  of  the  night  was  too  short  to 
allow  of  its  removal ;  besides,  the  energies  of  the  system  had 
been  overtaxed,  and  there  was  not  power  enough  left  to  re- 
move a  natural  accumulation,  let  alone  the  extraordinary. 

But  there  is  a  law  of  our  body,  whereby  pressure  from  any 
cause  not  only  gives  pain,  but  may  destroy  the  part  pressed 
against,  and  consume  it,  by  dissolving  it  into  a  gaseous  and 
fluid  substance,  which  in  this  condition  is  conveyed  out  of  the 
body.  A  band  put  around  an  arm  of  a  foot  in  circumference, 
will,  if  tightened  every  day,  in  a  time  not  long,  reduce  the 
circumference  to  six  inches.  Constant  pressure  cannot  be 
exerted  against  any  portion  of  the  human  body  without  im- 
pairing its  structure,  or  causing  its  diminution  and  final 
destruction.  These  are  principles  of  universal  admission. 
They  are  first  truths  in  medicine.  From  some  unknown 
cause,  this  accumulation  and  pressure  was  determined  to  a 
particular  portion  of  the  brain,  where  fearlessness  of  conse- 
quences are  situated ;  and  we  believe,  if  the  prisoner's  brain 
could  be  examined  this  day,  that  portion  of  it,  most  probably 
small  in  the  beginning,  would  be  found  almost  wholly  want- 
ing, having  been  destroyed  by  long-continued  pressure,  or  to 
be  of  abnormal  structure. 

We  believe  that  a  medical  treatment  which  would  have 
sternly  interdicted  the  use  of  the  cigar,  —  materially  at  first, 
and  gradually  thereafter  until  its  final  extinction,  —  together 
with  securing  a  natural  condition  of  daily  acting  bowels,  with 
a  plain  and  substantial  diet,  — and  kept  him  there, — would 
have  saved  him  and  all  his  from  the  subsequent  calamities. 


336  DISEASE  AND   CRIME. 

Artificial  excitements,  whether  from  tobacco,  opium,  or  alco- 
hol, if  largely  persevered  in,  will  work  ruin  to  mind,  body, 
and  soul.  It  is  right  that  it  should  be  so.  Omnipotence  has 
ordained  it.  If  a  man  is  in  a  physical  condition  which  impels 
him  to  do  what  is  illegal,  or  if  he  be  in  a  mental  condition 
which  impels  him  to  do  what  is  illegal,  the  question  whether 
he  is  to  be  punished  or  not,  depends  upon  the  manner  in 
which  he  became  subjected  to  that  condition.  If  such  condi- 
tion be  the  result  of  birth,  or  by  a  fall,  or  stroke,  or  other 
occurrence  out  of  his  control,  he  should  go  free  of  penal  suf- 
fering ;  but  if  he  placed  himself  in  that  condition  by  the  un- 
bridled indulgence  of  his  appetites  or  his  passions,  he  ought 
to  be  made  to  suffer  a  just  penalty,  whether  he  knew  that 
such  indulgences  tended  to  such  a  result  or  not.  It  is  a  man's 
duty  to  inform  himself  of  physiological  as  well  as  civil  law. 
Ignorance  of  the  former  ought  not  to  work  his  escape,  any 
more  than  ignorance  of  the  latter  does  ;  otherwise,  a  man  has 
only  to  get  drunk,  to  secure  impunity  from  any  crime  which 
may  be  committed  in  that  condition ;  thus  all  penal  statutes 
become  a  farce,  and  anarchy  rides  rampant  through  the  land. 

So,  also,  if  a  man  perverts  his  moral  sense,  and  by  a  course 
of  vicious  reasoning  persuades  himself  that  he  ought  to  com- 
mit murder,  and  thinks  of  it  so  much  as  to  feel  impelled  to 
murder  some  one,  he  is  properly  amenable  to  the  law  of  the 
land. 

It  is  no  very  difficult  matter  for  ordinary  minds  to  persuade 
themselves,  as  to  any  desired  course,  that  it  is  right ;  that 
there  is  no  harm  in  it ;  and  that,  if  they  meant  no  harm  by  it, 
no  blame  could  be  attached.  But  if,  for  such  flimsy  consider- 
ations, men  aVe  to  be  excused  from  penalties,  there  is  an  end 
at  once  to  all  law  and  to  all  government. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is  this.  Every  man 
should  be  held  responsible  for  his  deeds,  unless  they  are 
clearly  proved  to  be  the  result  of  a  physical,  mental,  or  moral 
condition,  which  he  had  no  agency  in  originating  or  exagger- 
ating to  the  criminal  point.  Hence  the  prisoner  was  con- 
victed. 


BODILY  CARRIAGE.  337 


BODILY  CARRIAGE. 

"  A  DYING  man  can  do  nothing  easy,"  as  he  spilled  some- 
thing which  was  given  him  to  swallow,  were  the  last  recorded 
words  of  him  who  in  life  had  "  tamed  the  lightning's  wins:," 

O  O  O " 

and  "bottled  the  thunders  of  Omnipotence."  But  it  would 
seem  an  easy  matter  for  a  sane  man  or  woman  in  good  health 
to  sit  down  properly.  And  yet  not  one  in  a  multitude  does  it. 
Far-seeing  mothers  sometimes  succeed  in  beating  it  into  the 
heads  of  thoughtless  daughters,  by  virtue  of  extraordinary 
perseverance,  as  a  means  of  getting  a  husband,  —  for  who 
ever  married  a  stoop-shoulderd  or  humpbacked  girl?  As  for 
the  sous,  they  are  left  to  take  their  chances,  and  assume  any 
shape  which  circumstances  may  determine.  But  it  helps 
vastly  in  our  efforts  to  accomplish  laudable  objects  to  have  a 
clear  and  adequate  reason  to  second  our  endeavors. 

Who  does  not  dread  and  hate  the  very  name  of  "  Consump- 
tion"? It  does  not  come  suddenly.  It  begins  in  remote 
months  and  years  agone  by  imperfect  breathing;  by  want 
of  frequent  and  full  breaths,  to  keep  the  lungs  in  active  oper- 
ation. In  time  the  lungs  swell  out  a  quarter  or  one  third 
less  than  they  ought  to  do ;  consequently  the  breast  flattens, 
the  arms  bend  forwards  and  inwards,  and  we  have  the  round 
or  high  shoulder  so  ominous  in  a  doctor's  eye.  As  consump- 
tives always  bend  forward,  and  as  men  in  high  health,  candi- 
dates for  aldermanic  honors,  sit,  and  walk,  and  stand  erect, 
— physically!  —  the  erect  position  must  be  antagonistic  of 
consumption,  and  consequently  should  be  cultivated,  sedu- 
lously cultivated,  in  every  manner  practicable  —  cultivated 
by  all,  men,  women,  and  children.  If  we  can  promote  this 
culture  without  interfering  with  the  ordinary  business  of  life, 
and  without  its  costing  a  dollar,  a  valuable  point  is  gained ; 
and,  considering  the  importance  of  the  subject,  we  shall  not 
think  ourselves  to  have  lived  in  vain,  if  this  article  shall 
be  practically  adopted  by  any  considerable  number  of  our 
readers. 

No  place  is  so  well  adapted  to  secure  an  erect  locomotion 
as  a  large  city ;  the  necessity  is  ever  present  for  holding  up 


338  BODILY  CARRIAGE. 

the  head ;  if  a  man  does  not  do  it,  he  will,  in  any  walk  along 
a  principal  street,  knock  his  brains  out ;  or,  if  he  be  unusu- 
ally hard-headed,  knock  out  the  brains  of  some  less  gifted 
pedestrian.  Instead  of  giving  all  sorts  of  rules  about  turning 
out  the  toes,  and  straightening  up  the  body,  and  holding  the 
shoulders  back,  all  of  which  are  impracticable  to  the  many, 
because  soon  forgotten,  or  of  a  feeling  of  awkwardness  and  dis- 
comfort which  procures  a'willing  omission,  — all  that  is  neces- 
sary to  secure  the  object  is  to  hold  up  the  head  and  move  on! 
letting  the  toes  and  shoulders  take  care  of  themselves.  Walk 
with  the  chin  but  slightly  above  a  horizontal  line,  or  with 
your  eye  directed  to  things  a  little  higher  than  your  own 
head.  In  this  way  you  walk  properly,  pleasurably,  and  with- 
out any  feeling  of  restraint  or  awkwardness.  If  any  one 
wishes  to  be  aided  in  securing  this  habitual  carriage  of  body, 
accustom  yourself  to  carry  the  hands  behind  you,  one  hand 
grasping  the  opposite  wrist.  Englishmen  are  admired  the 
world  over  for  their  full  chests,  and  broad  shoulders,  and 
sturdy  frames,  and  manly  bearing.  This  position  of  body  is  a 
favorite  with  them,  in  the  simple  promenade  in  the  garden  or 
gallery,  in  attending  ladies  along  a  crowded  street,  in  stand- 
ing on  the  street,  or  in  public  worship. 

Our  young  men  seem  to  be  in  Elysium  when  they  can  walk 
arm  in  arm  with  their  divinities.  Now,  young  gentlemen, 
you  will  be  hooked  on  soon  enough  without  anticipating  your 
captivity.  While  you  are  free,  walk  right,  in  all  ways; 
and  when  you  are  able,  get  a  manly  carriage  ;  and  take  our 
word  for  it,  it  is  the  best  way  to  secure  the  affectionate  re- 
spect of  the  woman  you  marry.  Did  you  ever  know  any  girl 
worth  having  who  could  wed  a  man  who  mopes  about  with 
his  eyes  on  the  ground,  making  of  his  whole  body  the  seg- 
ment of  a  circle,  bent  on  the  wrong  side?  Assuredly,  a 
'  woman  of  strong  points,  of  striking  characteristics,  admires, 
beyond  a  handsome  face,  the  whole  carriage  o£  a  man. 
Erectness  being  the  representative  of  courage  and  daring,  it 
is  this  which  makes  a  man  of  "  presence." 

Many  persons  spend  a  large  part  of  their  waking  existence 

in  the  sitting  position.     A  single  rule,  well  attended  to  in 

this  connection,  would  be  of  incalculable  value  to  multitudes  : 

-  Uxe  chairs  with  (he  old-fashioned  straight  backs,  a  little 


BODILY  CARRIAGE.  339 

inclining  backwards!  and  sit  with  the  lower  portion  of  the 
body  close  against  the  back  of  the  chair  at  the  seat ;  any  one 
who  tries  it  will  observe  in  a  moment  a  grateful  support  to 
the  whole  spine.  And  we  see  no  reason  why  children  should 
not  be  taught,  from  the  beginning,  to  write,  and  sew,  and 
knit,  in  a  position  requiring  the  lower  portion  of  the  body 
and  the  shoulders  to  touch  the  back  of  the  chair  all  the 
time. 

A  very  common  position  in  sitting,  especially  among  men, 
is  with  the  shoulders  against  the  chair-back,  with  a  space  of 
several  inches  between  the  chair-back  and  the  lower  portion 
of  the  spine,  giving  the  body  the  shape  of  a  half-hoop ;  it  is 
the  instantaneous,  instinctive,  and  almost  universal  position 
assumed  by  any  consumptive  on  sitting  down,  unless  counter- 
acted by  an  effort  of  the  will ;  hence  parents  should  regard 
such  a  position  in  their  children  with  apprehension,  and 
should  rectify  it  at  once. 

The  best  position  after  eating  a  regular  meal  is,  to  have  the 
hands  behind  the  back,  the  head  erect,  in  moderate  locomo- 
tion, and  in  the  open  air,  if  the  weather  is  not  chilly.  Half 
an  hour  spent  in  this  way  after  meals,  at  least  after  breakfast 
and  dinner,  would  add  health  and  length  of  days  to  women  in 
easy  life,  and  to  alj  sedentary  men.  It  is  a  thought  which 
richly  merits  attention.  As  to  the  habit  which  many  men 
have,  of  sitting  during  prayer,  in  forms  of  worship  not  requir- 
ing it,  with  the  elbows  extended  along  the  back  of  the  pew, 
and  forehead  resting  on  the  arms,  wre  will  only  say,  in  passing, 
that  besides  being  physiologically  unwise  and  hurtful,  it  is 
socially  an  uncourteous  and  indelicate  position,  wrhile  in  a 
religious  point  of  view  it  is  an  unpardonable  irreverence  ;  a 
position  which  no  man  with  the  feelings  of  a  gentleman,  unless 
an  invalid,  can  possibly  assume,  and  we  wonder  that  it  is  a 
practice  of  such  general  prevalence.  It  is  a  position  which, 
we  venture  to  affirm,  is  in  almost  every  instance  the  dictate 
of  bodily  laziness,  or  religious  sleepiness  or  indifference. 
Women  are  not  required  to  stand  in  prayer ;  it  is  physiologi- 
cally hurtful ;  they  should  sit  or  kneel. 


340  COMMON  SENSE. 


COMMON   SENSE. 

NOT  one  in  a  multitude  has  it.  Not  one  in  a  multitude  of 
those  who  make  use  of  the  expression  knows  what  it  means. 
Let  the  reader  try  this  moment  to  define  it  in  concise  lan- 
guage, and  in  a  moment  he  will  find  himself  "in  endless 
mazes  lost."  Yet  it  is  a  correct  and  appropriate  phrase,  if  we 
can  but  distinguish  between  the  possession  and  the  exercise  ; 
the  ownership  and  use  of  our  senses.  The  word  "  common  " 
qualifies  as  to  the  amount  of  sense,  but  does  not  apply  to  its 
use.  The  exact  meaning  to  be  attached  to  the  expression  is 
the  use  of  an  amount  of  intelligence  which  the  mass  of  per- 
sons possess.  Common  sense  is  the  use  of  experience  and 
observation.  It  is  the  practical  employment  of  an  ordinary 
amount  of  intelligence.  Most  persons  have  it — few  use  it. 
Its  possession  is  common  —  its  practice  uncommon  ;  hence 
the  literal  correctness  of  the  expression,  "  Very  few  people 
have  common  sense."  It  would  be  plainer  to  say,  "Very 
few  people  make  use  of  their  common  sense." 

For  example.  Ask  the  first  man  you  meet  if  he  has  not 
pushed  up  his  wristbands  in  washing  his  hands,  with  a  view 
to  their  remaining  up,  to  prevent  wetting  them,  until  the 
operation  is  over.  Ask  him,  further,  if  he  has  not  done  the 
same  thing  a  hundred  times,  and  if,  in  a  single  instance,  he 
ever  knew  them  to  stay  up  until  he  was  done.  And  yet  that 
man,  until  the  day  of  his  death,  will  attempt  that  same  use- 
less thing:  as  often  as  he  has  occasion  to  wash  his  hands  with 

O 

his  coat  on,  or  without  the  trouble  of  unbuttoning  the  wrist- 
bands. He  has,  in  common  with  the  multitude,  sense  enough 
to  know  that  the  wristbands  will  not  stay  up,  but  yet  he  does 
not  use  his  intelligence.  Hence  it  is  appropriately  said  of 
that  man,  "  He  has  not  common  sense," —  that  is,  he  does  not 
exercise  common  sense. 

A  man  knows  how  to  be  polite.  He  may  be  in  a  company 
which  does  not  merit  its  exercise,  in  his  opinion,  still  the 
omission  of  it  lays  him  liable  to  the  charge,  "  He  has  no  po- 
liteness,"—  that  is,  he  does  not  practise  it. 

The  mass  of  people  know  that  jumping  out  of  a  vehicle 


SLANDERING  DOCTORS.  341 

when  the  horses  are  running  away,  is  very  certain  to  be  fol- 
lowed with  loss  of  limb  or  life ;  they  know,  too,  that  drop- 
ping one's  self  out  from  behind  is  attended  with  comparatively 
little  danger,  and  yet  nine  out  of  ten  will  jump  out  at  the 
side  —  not  one  in  a  million  will  spill  himself  out  from  behind. 
Thus  every  one  of  the  million  has  sense  enough  to  know  the 
fact,  yet  only  one  in  the  million  is  found  to  use  it,  to  practise 
his  knowledge. 

Anybody  has  sense  enough  to  know  that,  if  additions  are 
daily  made  to  any  vessel,  and  nothing  be  taken  from  it,  day 
after  day,  the  vessel  will  soon  overflow,  and  there  will  be  mis- 
chief and  loss ;  and  yet  there  are  multitudes  in  every  com- 
munity who  ruin  their  health  in  early  life,  preparatory  to  a 
premature  death  or  an  age  of  suffering,  by  eating  heartily 
two  or  three  times  a  day,  for  days  together,  without  heeding 
the  necessity  of  a  daily  action  of  the  bowels  as  a  preventive 
of  irretrievable  mischief.  Countless  numbers  of  literary  men, 
students,  lawyers,  clergymen,  lose  their  health,  and  are  laid 
aside  from  usefulness  and  duty,  by  failing  to  recognize  practi- 
cally a  principle  so  self-evident,  that  daily  additions  to  the 
contents  of  the  body,  without  a  proportionate  outlet,  must 
result  disastrously.  Thus  it  is  we  say  of  many  great  men, 
men  of  extraordinary  acquirements  —  all  their  talents  cannot 
preserve  them  from  poverty.  They  have  the  sense  but  do 
not  use  it.  They  know  better,  but  do  not  act  out  their 
knowledge.  The  different  results  from  the  possession  and  use 
of  sense  and  money  are  striking.  The  less  a  man  uses 
(spends)  the  money  he  accumulates,  the  richer  he  becomes ; 
the  less  a  student  uses  his  daily  accumulation  of  knowledge, 
the  bigger  bore  he  is.  Therefore,  save  your  money — us« 
your  sense. 


SLANDERING  DOCTORS. 

A  GREAT  many  jokes  are  cracked  at  the  expense  of  the  doc- 
tors, and  at  the  expense  of  the  reputation  of  intellect  of 
those  who  crack  them;  for  a  moment's  consideration,  which, 
by  the  way,  in  this  fast  age  is  not  given  to  anything  of  true 
importance,  except  by  the  few  —  a  moment's  consideration 


342  SURGICAL   INSTRUMENTS. 

would  teach  any  one  that  it  is  to  the  doctor's  interest  to  keep 
the  patient  alive  as  long  as  possible,  for  as  long  as  the  patient 
lives  he  pays.  Witness  the  desperate  efforts  made  to  protract 
life  for  a  few  hours  in  the  last  extremity ;  how  the  medicine 
is  poured  down  every  five  minutes  as  long  as  the  dying  man 
can  swallow  ;  how  the  blister-plaster  encases  ankle,  wrist,  and 
waist,  to  kindle  up  again  the  powers  of  life,  for  with  return- 
ing life  returns  the  prospect  of  dollars.  For  our  part  we 
could  never  appreciate  the  philosophy  of  torturing  the  poor 
dying  body  in  the  ways  just  alluded  to,  to  the  last  moment  of 
existence.  The  great  Washington  prayed  to  be  allowed  to  die 
in  peace.  When  our  last  hour  comes,  hoist  the  window,  throw 
the  door  wide  open,  without  a  draught ;  moisten  the  lips  ;  clear 
the  room  of  all  but  one  or  two ;  let  all  the  pure  air  possible 
get  to  the  laboring  lungs.  Just  imagine,  reader,  what  would 
be  your  feelings  for  relief,  if  a  pillow  were  pressed  over  your 
face  for  a  minute,  and  you  may  have  some  idea  of  the  desire 
a  dying  man  has  for  all  the  air  he  can  get.  But  as  an  evi- 
dence that  doctors  are  not  such  a  murderous  class  as  repre- 
sented sometimes,  the  last  census  shows  that  it  requires  eighty 
doctors  to  keep  one  undertaker,  there  being  forty  thousand 
doctors  in  the  United  States,  while  there  are  only  five  hun- 
dred professed  undertakers,  the  irregulars  of  both  not  included. 


SUEGICAL  INSTRUMENTS. 

SURGICAL  instruments  are  quite  the  rage  nowadays.  Men 
and  women,  as  "  flat  as  a  flounder,"  patronize  abdominal  sup- 
porters, when  the  great  mischief  is,  they  haven't  anything  to 
support. 

Deaf  women,  the  dumb  ones  having  all  died  off  before  the 
flood,  are  provided  with  patent  "  auricles,"  which  stick  out 
on  each  side  of  the  head  like  two  great  rams'  horns,  all  re- 
gardless of  the  fact  whether  there  is  any  hearing  to  be  aided 
or  not.  Then  there  are  shoulder-braces  and  back-straps, 
respirators,  inhnlers,  et  id  omne,  ad  infinitum;  so  that  there 
is  scarcely  a  member  of  the  human  body  that  is  not  provided 
with  an  "  aid."  The  stomach  has  a  million  ;  amonij  the  worst 


GLOVED    TO  DEATH.  343 

are  German  gin  and  British  beer,  made  out  of  worse  than 
bilge-water.  Now,  any  intelligent  physician  knows  that  the 
vast  mass  of  persons  who  patronize  these  great  variety  of 
supporters,  need  aids  of  a  very  different  kind.  The  best 
respirator  in  the  world  is,  to  shut  your  mouth  and  go  ahead  ; 
the  most  efficient  "  shoulder-brace"  is,  to  hold  up  your  head 
and  march  on ;  while  the  most  valuable  general  "  supporter," 
and  the  only  one  needed  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  is,  to  make 
the  patient  go  to  work,  and  compel  him  to  live  on  his  daily 
earnings. 


GLOVED   TO  DEATH. 

THERE  are  many  almost  inappreciable  sappers  of  our  life, 
any  one  of  which  might  be  in  operation  for  a  long  time  with- 
out causing  any  alarming  condition  of  the  system ;  but  when 
a  multitude  of  these  are  at  work,  critical  symptoms  appear 
with  alarming  rapidity.  The  purest  water  will  become  putrid 
if  allowed  to  stagnate.  The  purest  air  from  the  ocean  or  the 
poles,  if  kept  still,  becomes  corrupt  in  the  cleanliest  habita- 
tion in  the  land ;  and  the  healthiest  blood  in  the  systetn  be- 
gins in  a  moment  to  die,  if  for  a  moment  it  is  arrested  in  its 
progress  through  the  system.  In  either  of  these  cases  of 
fresh  water,  of  pure  air,  and  healthy  blood,  corruption  is  the 
inevitable  result  of  stagnation.  To  keep  them  all  pure  and 
life-giving,  activity  of  motion  is  a  physical  necessity.  What- 
ever tends  to  arrest  or  impede  the  flow  of  blood  through  the 
body,  does  in  that  same  proportion  inevitably  engender  dis- 
ease ;  any  other  result  is  physically  impossible,  because  im- 
pure blood  is  the  foundation  or  an  attendant  of  all  sickness. 

Very  recently  a  New  Yorker  purchased  a  pair  of  boots, 
but  they  fitted  so  tightly  that  he  was  compelled  to  take  them 
off  before  night,  but  they  caused  his  death  within  forty-eight 
hours. 

The  most  unobservant  know  that  cold  feet  and  hands  are 
uniform  symptoms  in  those  diseases  which  gradually  wear  our 
lives  away.  The  cause  of  these  symptoms  is  a  want  of  circu- 
lation. The  blood  does  not  pass  to  and  from  the  extremities 
with  facility.  Nine  tenths  of  our  women,  at  least  in  cities 


344  MAKE  HOME  HAPPY. 

and  large  towns,  have  cold  feet  or  hands,  or  both  ;  hence,  not 
one  in  a  hundred  is  healthy.  It  is  at  our  feet  and  hands  that 
we  begin  to  die,  and  last  of  all  the  heart,  because,  last  of  all, 
stagnation  takes  place  there.  In  the  worst  cases  of  disease, 
the  physician  is  hopeful  of  recovery  as  long  as  he  can  keep 
the  extremities  warm ;  when  that  cannot  be  done,  hope  dies 
within  him.  It  needs  no  argument  to  prove  that  a  tight  glove 
prevents  the  free  circulation  of  blood  through  the  hands  and 
lingers.  It  so  happens  that  the  very  persons  who  ought  to 
do  everything  possible  to  promote  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
are  those  who  most  cultivate  tight  gloves,  to  wit,  the  wives 
and  daughters  who  have  nothing  to  do  but  dress ;  or,  rather, 
do  nothing  but  dress  ;  or,  to  be  critically  accurate,  who  spend 
more  time  in  connection  with  dressing,  than  on  all  other 
objects  together,  not  including  sleep.  No  man  or  woman 
born  has  any  right  to  do  a  deliberate  injury  to  the  body  for  a 
single  hour  in  the  day ;  but  to  do  it  day  after  day  for  a  life- 
time, against  the  lights  of  science  and  common  sense,  is  not 
wise.  We  may  wink  at  it,  glide  over  it,  talk  about  this  being 
a  free  country,  that  it  is  ridiculous  for  a  doctor  to  dictate 
whether  a  glove  shall  be  worn  tight  or  loose,  but  the  effect 
won't  fce  laughed  or  scorned  away,  for  whatever  is  done  which 
impedes  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  is  done  wrongfully 
against  our  bodies,  and  will  be  as  certain  of  injurious  results 
as  the  hindering  of  any  law,  physical  or  physiological.  Every 
grain  of  sand  must  be  taken  care  of,  or  the  universe  would 
dash  to  atoms ;  and  so  with  the  little  things  of  the  body. 


MAKE  HOME  HAPPY, 

PARENTS,  if  you  wish  to  prevent  your  children  from  falling 
into  practices  and  associations  which  lead  to  loss  of  health 
and  morals,  and  to  a  premature  grave.  The  love  of  home, 
as  a  part  of  parental  teaching,  forms  the  subject  of  an  article 
in  that  very  excellent  publication,  "The  Presbyterian  Maga- 
zine," of  Philadelphia ;  and  we  trust  that  all  who  read  it  will 
give  it  adequate  consideration.  It  is  not  enough  that  our 
children  have  abundant  food  and  clothing,  and  comfortable 


MAKE  HOME  HAPPY.  345 

lodging.  There  is  a  monotony  about  these  things  which  soon 
tires ;  the  very  absence  of  such  comforts  is  an  agreeable  re- 
lief, at  any  time,  if  away  from  home.  It  is  a  common  remark, 
that  a  child  eats  almost  as  much  as  a  grown  person,  and 
nothing  will  satisfy  a  hungry  child.  It  is  strikingly  so  with 
the  mind ;  it  must  have  food  to  feed  it ;  that  food  is  variety 
—  the  variety  of  the  new,  the  unknown  —  that  is  what  de- 
lights children  of  all  ages ;  and  to  gratify  that  delight  by 
presenting  to  their  attention,  with  moderate  rapidity  of 
succession,  what  is  substantial,  valuable,  practical,  is  one  of 
the  most  important  of  all  parental  occupations.  And  parents 
should  feel  themselves  constantly  stimulated  to  efforts  of  this 
kind  by  the  consideration,  that,  if  they  do  not  hold  these 
things  up  to  their  attention,  their  reverses  will  be  presented 
to  them  in  endless  combinations,  by  the  lower  associations  of 
the  street  and  of  the  kitchen. 

The  three  necessities  of  children  are  food,  exercise,  amuse- 
ment. They  will  eat,  they  will  move  about,  they  will  be 
entertained.  The  feeding  of  the  mind  is  as  essential  as  the 
feeding  of  the  body  ;  and  not  half  a  parent's  duty  is  done  in 
securing  house,  and  food,  and  raiment.  So  far  from  appre- 
ciating this  mental  necessity,  wre  are  too  apt  to  thwart  their 
own  instinctive  efforts  to  satisfy  it,  by  our  short  and  listless, 
if  not,  indeed,  impatient  and  angry  answers  to  their  multi- 
tudinous inquiries.  Under  such  treatment,  they  soon  learu 
the  uselessuess  of  seeking  information  from  their  parents, 
and  gradually  seek  it  elsewhere,  with  its  large  admixture  of 
incorrectness,  iuiperfectness,  and,  too  often,  viciousuess. 

In  our  opinion,  neither  sons  nor  daughters  should  be  al- 
lowed to  sleep  away  from  home,  unless  their  parents  are  with 
them.  We  sincerely  hope  that  such  a  blessing  may  be  secured 
to  ours,  until  the  day  of  marriage.  It  is  a  true  mother's 
love  which  seeks  to  keep  her  daughter  in  sight,  until  superior 
claims  come;  it  would  save  many  a  family  from  social  ruin, 
and  many  a  parent's  heart  from  breaking.  As  for  our  sous, 
it  should  be  impressed  upon  them,  that  no  business  is  to 
require  their  attention,  and  to  keep  them  out  of  the  house 
after  sundown,  unless  the  parent  is  along,  as  long  in  their 
teens  as  it  is  possible  to  secure  obedience  to  such  a  requisition. 
And,  to  make  such  obedience  pleasurable,  let  it  be  the  par- 


340  POSITION  IN  SLEEPING. 

enls'  study  to  render  home  inviting,  by  the  cultivation  of  all 
that  is  courteous  and  kindly,  and  by  the  large  and  habitual 
exercise  of  the  better  qualities  of  our  nature,  especially  those 
of  sympathy,  and  love,  and  affection. 

To  all  parents  we  say,  Keep  your  children  at  home  as 
much,  and  together,  as  long  as  it  is  at  all  possible  for  you 
to  do  it.  No  better  plan  can  be  devised  for  enabling  a  house- 
hold to  grow  up  loving  and  being  loved,  in  all  its  members. 


POSITION  IN  SLEEPING. 

IT  is  better  to  go  to  sleep  on  the  right  side,  for  then  the 
stomach  is  very  much  in  the  position  of  a  bottle  turned  up- 
side down,  and  the  contents  are  aided  in  passing  out  by 
gravitation.  If  one  goes  to  sleep  on  the  left  side,  the  opera- 
tion of  emptying  the  stomach  of  its  contents  is  more  like 
drawing  water  from  a  well.  After  going  to  sleep,  let  the 
body  take  its  own  position.  If  you  sleep  on  your  back,  espe- 
cially soon  after  a  hearty  meal,  the  weight  of  the  digestive 
organs,  and  that  of  the  food,  resting  on  the  great  vein  of  the 
body,  near  the  backbone,  compresses  it,  and  arrests  the  flow 
of  the  blood  more  or  less.  If  the  arrest  is  partial,  the  sleep 
is  disturbed,  and  there  are  unpleasant  dreams.  If  the  meal 
has  been  recent  or  hearty,  the  arrest  is  more  decided,  and  the 
various  sensations,  such  as  falling  over  a  precipice,  or  the 
pursuit  of  a  wild  beast,  or  other  impending  danger,  and  the 
desperate  effort  to  get  rid  of  it,  arouses  us ;  that  sends  on  the 
stagnating  blood,  and  we  wake  in  a  fright,  or  trembling,  or 
perspiration,  or  feeling  of  exhaustion,  according  to  the  degree 
of  stagnation,  and  the  length  and  strength  of  the  effort  made 
to  escape  the  danger.  But,  when  we  are  not  able  to  escape 
the  danger,  when  we  do  fall  over  the  precipice,  when  the 
tumbling  building  crushes  us,  what  then?  That  is  death! 
That  is  the  death  of  those  of  whom  it  is  said,  when  found 
lifeless  in  their  bed  in  the  morning,  "  They  were  as  well  as 
they  ever  were  the  day  before ;  "  and  often  is  it  added,  "and 
ate  heartier  than  common."  This  last,  as  a  frequent  cause 
of  death  to  those  who  have  gone  to  bed  well,  to  wake  no 


WINTER  RAILROADING.  347 

more,  we  give  merely  as  a  private  opinion.  The  possibility 
of  its  truth  is  enough  to  deter  any  rational  man  from  a  late 
and  hearty  meal.  This  we  do  know  with  certainty,  that 
waking  up  in  the  night  with  painful  diarrhoea,  or  cholera, 
or  bilious  colic,  ending  in  death  in  a  very  short  time,  is 
properly  traceable  to  a  late  large  meal.  The  truly  wise  will 
take  the  safer  side.  For  persons  who  eat  three  times  a  day, 
it  is  amply  sufficient  to  make  the  last  meal  of  cold  bread  and 
butter  and  a  cup  of  some  warm  drink.  No  one  can  starve  on 
it ;  while  a  perseverance  in  the  habit  soon  begets  a  vigorous 
appetite  for  breakfast,  so  promising  of  a  day  of  comfort. 


WINTER  RAILROADING. 

SUCH  multitudes  travel  in  rail-cars  in  winter  time,  it  will 
be  a  public  benefit  to  make  some  statements  in  its  bearing  on 
health.  To  regulate  the  temperature  of  any  car  to  suit  the 
hundred  different  persons  who  occupy  it,  is  simply  impossible. 
Only  general  principles  can  be  profitable  and  practical. 

It  is  better  that  the  car  should  be  too  warm  than  too  cold, 
for  the  many  who  come  into  it  in  a  more  or  less  heated  con- 
dition, from  various  causes,  too  well  known  to  be  enumerated. 
A  person  terminating  exercise  in  a  very  warm  room  cannot 
take  cold.  A  person  terminating  exercise  causing  the  slight- 
est moisture  on  the  surface,  will  always  take  cold  within 
fifteen,  often  within  five  minutes,  after  sitting  still  in  a  cold 
apartment;  and,  if  continued,  an  attack  of  pleurisy,  or  in- 
flammation, or  congestion  of  the  lungs,  is  an  almost  certain 
event,  from  either  of  which  results  a  life-long  inconvenience, 
if  not,  indeed,  a  speedy  death.  Therefore,  as  to  all  persons 
entering  a  car  at  the  beginning  of  a  journey,  it  is  safer,  be- 
yond comparison,  that  it  should  be  too  warm  than  too  cold. 

Persons  sitting  in  a  cold  car,  for  a  time  sufficient  to  allow 
them  to  get  thoroughly  chilled,  will  scarcely  fail  to  suffer  from 
an  attack  of  some  acute  disease,  in  spite  of  a  subsequent 
warming  up  by  exercise  or  otherwise  ;  while  it  is  well  known 
that  persons  may  remain  for  hours  in  an  apartment  heated  to 
a  hundred  degrees  and  over  without  any  permanent  discom- 
fort, if  they  are  careful  to  cool  off  slowly. 


348  GROW  BEAUTIFUL. 

But,  as  the  cars  may  be  very  hot  in  midwinter,  and  pas- 
sengers are  put  down  at  every  station,  and  often  without  any 
fire  to  go  to,  it  is,  most  of  all,  important  to  know  how  to 
conduct  one's  self  without  injury  under  the  circumstances. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  have  all  the  clothing  adjusted  —  hat, 
gloves,  everything — before  the  cars  stop;  as  soon  as  they 
stop,  shut  your  mouth,  open  the  door,  and  run  as  fust  as  you 
can  to  your  destination,  or  the  first  available  house,  keeping 
the  mouth  resolutely  shut,  if  possible,  until  you  get  within 
doors,  and  then  remain  with  all  your  clothing  on  for  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes. 

The  running  keeps  the  blood  warm,  and  to  the  surface. 

The  closing  of  the  mouth  sends  the  cold  air  by  the  circuit 
of  the  nose,  and  heats  it  before  it  reaches  the  lungs. 

The  retention  of  the  clothing  allows  the  circulation  to 
become  natural  slowly,  and  while  so,  no  one  can  take  cold. 

With  these  precautions,  the  more  a  person  travels  by  rail- 
road the  more  -hearty  will  he  become,  and,  eventually,  will 
not  take  cold  in  a  year's  travel. 

In  winter  railroading  the  feet  require  most  attention.  The 
floor  of  the  car  is  the  coldest  part  of  it  under  any  circum- 
stances ;  while  a  single  plank  separates  them  from  a  zero 
temperature,  it  may  be.  Persons  will  greatly  consult  their 
comfort  by  keeping  their  feet  on  the  foot-boards,  and,  in 
addition,  have  the  feet  and  legs  well  wrapped  in  a  substantial 
blanket  or  other  covering.  It  is  vastly  better  to  shawl  the 
feet  than  the  shoulders  in  a  rail-car. 


GROW  BEAUTIFUL. 

PERSONS  may  outgrow  disease,  and  become  healthy,  by 
proper  attention  to  the  laws  of  their  physical  constitutions. 
By  moderate  and  daily  exercise,  men  may  become  active  and 
strong  in  limb  and  muscle.  But  to  grow  beautiful,  how? 
Age  dims  the  lustre  of  the  eye,  and  pales  the  roses  on  beauty's 
cheek ;  while  crow-feet,  and  furrows,  and  wrinkles,  and  lost 
teeth,  and  gray  hairs,  and  bald  head,  and  tottering  limbs,  and 
limping  feet,  most  sadly  mar  the  human  form  divine.  But 


MILK.  349 

dim  as  the  eye  is,  as  pallid  and  sunken  as  may  be  the  face  of 
beauty,  and  frail  and  feeble  that  once  strong,  erect,  and  man- 
ly body,  the  immortal  soul,  just  fledging  its  wings  for  its 
home  in  heaven,  may  look  out  through  these  faded  windows 
as  beautiful  as  the  dew-drops  of  a  summer's  morning,  as  melt- 
ing as  the  tear  that  glistens  in  affection's  eye,  by  growing 
kindly,  by  cultivating  sympathy  with  all  human  kind ;  by 
cherishing  forbearance  towards  the  foibles  and  follies  of  our 
race,  and  feeding  day  by  day  on  that  love  to  God  and  man 
which  lifts  us  from  the  brute,  and  makes  us  akin  to  angels. 


MILK. 

MANY  persons  imagine  that  the  milk  of  cows  is  one  of  the 
most  healthful  of  all  articles,  and  yet  it  is  a  great  mistake, 
except  under  certain  limitations.  By  stout,  strong,  hardy, 
industrious  out-door  working  men  it  may  be  used  advanta- 
geously for  breakfast  and  dinner,  but,  except  in  tea  and  coffee, 
and  now  and  then  half  a  glass  for  breakfast  or  dinner,  it  is  not 
a  proper  article  of  food  for  invalids.  In  many  instances 
patients  have  said  to  me,  "I  used  to  be  a  dear  lover  of  milk, 
but  I  thought  it  made  me  bilious,  and  I  have  ceased  using  it 
altogether."  This  is  the  common-sense  observation  of  ordi- 

O 

nary  men  —  one  that,  without  any  theory,  and  against  a  life- 
time of  prejudice,  has  forced  itself  upon  the  attention. 

The  rule  that  a  man  may  eat  almost  anything  with  impunity, 
applies  to  one  in  good  health,  eating  in  moderation,  according 
to  the  quality  of  the  food ;  but  when  an  invalid  is  to  be  fed, 
very  different  principles  are  to  govern. 

In  all  that  I  may  say,  I  ask  credence  for  nothing,  except  in 
proportion  as  it  is  followed  up  by  the  argument  of  whole 
facts. 


350  LIVING  IN  THE  COUNTRY. 


LIVING  IN  THE  COUNTRY. 

LIVING  in  the  country  and  doing  business  in  town,  is  a 
"dog's  life,"  from  beginning  to  end,  as  far  as  New  York  is 
concerned.  Instead  of  adding  to  one's  comfort  and  quiet,  it 
diminishes  both.  So  far  from  promoting  health,  it  undermines 
it ;  while  in  a  business  point  of  view,  it  is  attended  with  a 
multitude  of  annoyances  of  every  variety.  We  have  tried  it 
under  very  favorable  circumstances,  and  speak  from  ex- 
perience. We  know  that  many  persons  think  that  they 
would  like  nothing  better  than  to  be  able  to  work  in  town 
and  live  in  the  country.  In  some  few  cases  it  may  be  a  com- 
fort :  it  is  when  a  man  can  afford  to  go  to  his  place  of  business 
not  sooner  than  ten  in  the  morning ;  or,  if  he  does  not  go  at  all 
for  any  day,  or  two  or  three  of  any  week  in  the  year,  it  makes 
no  kind  of  difference,  having  persons  on  the  spot  who  will  do 
just  as  well.  But  to  be  the  main  spoke  in  the  wheel  of  any 
establishment,  whose  punctual  and  daily  presence  is  indis- 
pensable, it  is  an  unmistakable  bore  to  live  out  of  the  city 
limits. 

The  semi-citizen  is  in  a  hurry  from  one  year's  end  to  another. 
When  he  goes  to  bed  at  night,  among  his  last  thoughts  are  — 
and  there  is  an  anxiety  about  it  —  that  he  may  oversleep  him- 
self, or  that  the  cook  may  be  behind  time  with  his  breakfast ; 
so,  going  to  sleep  with  these  thoughts,  the  instant  he  wakes  in 
the  morning  there  is  a  start,  and  the  hurry  begins  —  he  opens 
his  eyes  in  a  hurry,  to  determine  by  the  quality  of  the  light 
whether  he  is  in  time.  His  toilet  is  completed  with  despatch  ; 
but  instead  of  composedly  waiting  for  breakfast-call,  his  mind, 
even  if  not  on  his  business,  will  be  in  the  kitchen.  Can  a  man 
converse  composedly  with  his  family,  when  the  fear  is  upper- 
most of  his  being  left  by  the  train?  It  is  impracticable.  Even 
with  the  case  in  a  thousand,  where  the  cook  is  a  minute-man, 
he  can't  for  the  life  of  him  eat  with  a  feeling  of  leisure  :  may 
be  his  watch  is  a  little  slow  ;  may  be  the  train  is  a  little  before 
time,  and  the  result  is,  a  hurried  and  unsatisfactory  meal,  to 
say  the  least  of  it,  under  the  most  favorable  circumstances ; 
but  suppose  the  cook  is  like  the  multitude  of  her  class  —  never 


LIVING  IN  THE   COUNTRY.  351 

before  but  always  behind  the  time  —  what  a  fretting  feeling  is 
present,  mad  as  fire,  yet  afraid  to  say  anything ;  soon  the  wife 
gets  the  contagion,  and  then  the  play  begins ;  stand  about, 
everybody. 

You  are  deposited  in  the  cars  for  town';  accidents  and  delays 
will  occur;  your  mind  is  in  your  office,  may  be  a  customer  is 
waiting,  or  you  are  pressed  for  time  to  meet  an  engagement. 
As  soon  as  midday  is  past,  the  solicitude  begins  lest  circum- 
stances should  prevent  your  departure  by  a  specified  train ; 
this  increases  as  the  hour  draws  near,  and  when  we  take  into 
account  the  dilatory  nature  of  most  men,  it  will  be  a  marvel  if 
some  one  is  not  late  in  meeting  you,  or  making  an  expected 
payment ;  or  a  customer  does  not  hang  on  your  button-hole, 
and  you  don't  wish  to  offend  him.  In  short,  there  are  such  a 
multitude  of  causes  in  operation  to  crowd  the  last  moments  of 
the  business  day,  that  we  do  not  believe  that  one  semi-citizen 
in  a  hundred,  of  any  day,  walks  to  the  depot  from  his  place  of 
business  with  a  feeling  of  quiet  leisure.  When  you  get  home, 
you  are  too  tired  and  too  hungry  to  be  agreeable  until  you  get 
your  last  meal ;  even  then  there  is  a  calculation  about  getting 
to  bed  early,  so  as  to  have  your  full  sleep  by  morning.  We 
ask,  Where  is  the  "  quietude  "  of  a  life  like  this  ?  It  does  not 
exist.  Such  a  man  is  an  entire  stranger  to  composure  of  mind. 
One  beautiful  morning  a  sprightly  young  gentleman  entered 
the  cars  just  as  they  were  moving  off.  We  had  seen  him  often, 
always  in  a  hurry,  always  in  a  pleasant  humor.  He  said  to  a 
friend,  as  he  took  his  seat,  "I've  been  in  a  hurry  from  morn- 
ing until  night  for  the  last  two  years  —  always  on  the  stretch, 
but  never  left.  Came  very  near  it  this  time."  Soon  after- 
wards it  appeared  that  he  had  been  industriously  engaged 
the  whole  of  that  time,  and  had  accomplished  a  great  deal ; 
for  he  had,  in  various  directions,  disposed  of  seventy  thou- 
sand dollars  belonging  to  a  public  institution,  of  which  he  was 
the  custodian.  If  this  incessant  hurry,  from  one  year's  end  to 
another,  can  promote  quietude  of  mind,  can  conduce  to  one's 
pecuniary  advantage,  can  foster  domestic  enjoyments,  it  is 
new  to  us.  We  think,  rather,  that  it  tends  to  fix  on  the  mind 
a  stereotype  impression  of  anxious  sadness,  which,  in  the 
father  of  any  family,  to  be  seen  every  day,  must  have  a 
decided  effect  in  subduing  that  spontaneous  joyousness  which 


352  WATER  CUBE. 

should  pervade  the  countenance  of  every  member  of  a  happy 
household. 

There  is  one  little  matter  which  we  prefer  to  speak  of 
before  dismissing  the  subject,  which  we  consider  of  vital 
importance,  and  is  the  idea  which  led  to  the  penning  of  this 
article. 

A  daily  action  of  the  bowels  is  essential  to  good  health 
under  all  circumstances ;  the  want  of  it  engenders  the  most 
painful  and  fatal  diseases.  Nature  prompts  this  action  with 
great  regularity,  most  generally  after  breakfast.  Hurry  or 
excitement  will  dispel  that  prompting,  and  the  result  is, 
nature  is  baffled.  Her  regular  routine  is  interfered  with,  and 
harm  is  done.  This  is  a  thing  which  most  persons  do  not 
hesitate  to  postpone,  and  in  the  case  of  riding  to  town,  a  delay 
of  one  or  two  hours  is  involved.  This  never  can  occur  with 
impunity,  in  any  single  instance,  to  any  person  living.  This 
very  little  thing,  —  postponing  nature's  daily  bowel  actions  ; 
failing  to  have  them  with  regularity,  —  is  the  cause  of  all  cases 
of  piles  and  anal  fistulas,  to  say  nothing  of  various  other  forms 
of  disease :  fever,  dyspepsia,  headache,  and  the  whole  family 
of  neuralgias.  A  man  had  better  lose  a  dinner,  better  sacri- 
fice the  earnings  of  a  day,  than  repress  the  call  of  nature ;  for 
it  will  inevitably  lead  to  constipation,  the  attendant  and 
aggravator  of  almost  every  disease.  To  arrange  this  thing 
safely,  breakfast  should  be  had  at  such  an  early  time  as  to 
allow  a  full  half  hour's  leisure  between  the  close  of  the  meal 
and  the  time  of  leaving  for  the  cars. 


WATER  CURE. 

ONE  of  the  most  powerful  of  remedial  means  is  the  use  of 
cold  water  —  powerful  for  good  or  ill.  Much  of  the  prejudice 
existing  against  it  is  unjust,  having  arisen  from  its  injudicious 
application  by  incompetent  men.  Any  valuable  remedy  is 
liable  to  abuse.  Beyond  all  question  calomel,  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  Old  School,  is  worth  all  the  other  remedies  of 
Allopathic  Materia  Medica;  but  nine  tenths  of  those  who 
employ  it  do  so  injudiciously,  and  one  of  the  great  reasons  of 


WATER  CURE.  353 

this  injudicious  use  is  in  the  fact  that  inconsiderate  practi- 
tioners, living  in  one  section  of  the  country,  have  taken 
"  reported  cases  "  from  other  and  distant  sections  for  their 
guide. 

So  with  the  errors  of  water  cure.  Its  wise  and  safe  applica- 
tion consults  the  varying  habits,  temperaments,  constitutions, 
and  modes  of  life  of  those  who  employ  it.  The  truly  intel- 
ligent men  who  practise  the  water  cure,  owe  it  to  the  repu- 
tation of  a  useful  remedy  to  impress  upon  their  younger 
brethren  the  value  of  a  thoughtful  discrimination  in  every 
case.  A  lady  of  unusual  intelligence  writes,  — 

"I  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  over-treated  at  a  water-cure. 
I  believed  the  doctor  did  his  best  to  cure  me,  but  the  treat- 
ment was  too  powerful  for  a  person  the  most  marked  feature 
of  whose  case  has  always  been  great  depression  of  vital  power. 
It  produced  entire  sleeplessness.  It  was  more.  I  was  preter- 
naturally  awake.  For  four  days  and  nights  I  did  not  lose  my 
consciousness  for  a  single  moment.  A\*nen,  at  the  end  of  this 
time,  and  life  was  almost  extinct,  I  would  fall  asleep,  and  for 
a  week  sleep  some,  after  a  fashion  ;  then  another  of  those  ter- 
rible attacks  of  sleeplessness  would  come  on,  and  run  its 
course,  no  matter  what  was  done.  In  this  way  I  suffered  for 
more  than  a  year,  and  then  I  began  to  sleep  better ;  but  I  am 
sure  my  system  received  a  great  shock,  and  I  doubt  if  I  ever 
sleep  as  well  as  other  people.  I  have  been  obliged  to  give  up 
cold  bathing  altogether.  A  single  bath  will  deprive  me  of  the 
power  of  sleeping.  I  now  use  tepid  sponging  every  other 
day,  with  soap,  and  think  it  agrees  with  me." 

We  knew  an  estimable  gentleman  some  years  ago,  of  small 
vitality,  and  very  feeble  constitution.  He  could  not  keep 
warm.  The  cold-water  mania  seized  him  at  this  time ;  he 
carried  it  to' the  greatest  extremes,  when  chronic  diarrhoea  set 
in,  and  he  died. 

He  had  two  small  children  —  girls  —  of  three  and  five  years. 
His  theory  was,  that  to  secure  them  a  hardihood  of  constitu- 
tion,  they  must  have  a  cold  bath  every  morning.  They  would 
regularly  come  from  the  bath  shivering  with  cold,  lips  and 
finger  nails  blue,  even  in  summer,  and  it  would  be  a  long 
time  before  they  could  get  warm.  Their  mother,  an  unresist- 
ing Quaker  woman,  of  great  excellence  of  character,  saw  her 


354  BODILY  ENDURANCE. 

children  paling  away  before  her  daily,  while  her  husband  had 
become  so  fanatical  that  she  saw  argument  and  remonstrance 
would  be  alike  unavailing.  His  death  terminated  these  vio- 
lences. The  children  rallied  soon  after,  and  grew  up  in  excel- 
lent health,  and  for  aught  we  know  are  alive  and  well  to  this 
day. 

The  idea  which  we  wish  to  impress  upon  the  minds  of  our 
readers  is,  cold  water  is  a  valuable  and  powerful  remedy,  but 
as  a  remedy  in  any  decided  ailment  it  should  never  be  em- 
ployed except  by  the  direction  of  a  physician  of  experience 
and  education. 

Scientific  hydropathy  is  no  more  responsible  for  the  abuse 
of  cold  water  as  a  remedy  in  disease,  than  are  the  Old  School 
doctors  for  the  abuse  of  calomel  by  ignorant  or  reckless  per- 
sons. In  the  hands  of  experienced  men,  both  are  remedies 
of  very  great  value,  and  both  in  their  places  are  indispensable. 

Our  general  opinion  is,  that  all  children  under  ten  years  of 
age,  all  invalids,  people  of  thin  flesh,  and  those  who  are  easily 
chilled,  should  always  wash  their  limbs  and  bodies  in  warm 
water,  with  soap  and  brush,  in  a  room  almost  as  warm  as  the 
water  itself. 


BODILY  ENDURANCE. 

AN  ecclesiastic,  whose  keenness  of  logic,  whose  thorough 
scholarship,  whose  depth  of  thought  and  breadth  of  view 
have  made  his  name  familiar  to  both  hemispheres,  in  a  pri- 
vate letter  gives  us  credit  for  possessing  a  sounder  theology 
than  half  the  ministers  in  the  land.  May  be  he  had  not  learned 
that  we  have  considered  it  a  self-evident  proposition  that 
the  human  heart  was  the  seat  of  a  depravity  all-pervading. 
In  that  respect  we  are  John  Calvin,  and,  if  anything  diifercnt, 
with  a  bend  backwards.  We  do  not  believe  that  every  hu- 
man heart  is  equally  bad ;  some  are  worse  than  others,  incal- 
culably worse,  just  as  of  several  glasses  of  pure  water,  a  few 
drops  of  ink  will  color  the  whole  body  of  water  in  one  glass, 
making  it  totally  discolored  —  not  an  atom  of  it  that  is  not 
colored  some ;  a  few  additional  drops  will  give  a  more  dis- 
tinct coloring  to  the  next  glass,  so  that  of  each  glass  it  may 


BODILY  ENDURANCE.  355 

be  said,  as  to  the  water  within  it,  it  is  totally  discolored,  yet 
some  are  of  a  deeper  black  than  others  ;  but  all  are  blackened 
—  every  particle  of  each  glass  is  discolored.  No  atom  of  any 
glass  is  clear ;  so  no  one  outgoing  of  the  human  heart,  in  its 
natural  state,  is  clear,  is  pure,  is  without  a  stain.  But  the 
extent  of  that  stain,  the  depth  of  its  blackness,  has  a  strong 
exhibition  in  one  of  the  British  Reviews.  The  article  is  en- 
titled "Christian  Missions  a  Failure."  That  is  to  say,  all  the 
money  expended  by  missionaries  for  the  purpose  of  enabling 
the  heathen  to  read  the  Bible,  has  been  a  bad  investment; 
that  the  effort  made  to  enlighten  the  nations  for  a  century  or 
two  past  has  "  cost  more  than  it  comes  to  " —  the  good  done 
has  not  been  commensurate  with  the  money  expended. 

We  can  scarcely  conceive  of  a  piece  of  more  virulent,  ill- 
natured  malignity  than  that  which  must  have  pervaded  the 
heart  of  the  writer  at  the  time  of  his  penning  the  article. 
We  can  all  appreciate  the  feeling  which  prompts  the  using  of 
a  dagger  —  deliberate,  determined,  vengeful,  murderous  ! 
We  would  handle  such  a  one  in  this  way  :  Your  composition 
shows  that  you  are  highly  educated,  that  your  associations 
have  been  of  an  elevated  character,  and  that  you  would  shrink 
from  making  yourself  liable  to  the  charge  of  being  wanting 
in  gentlemanly  bearing  or  honorable  dealing.  But  none  of 
this  money  was  yours,  not  a  cent  of  it.  The  persons  who 
made  that  money  appropriated  it  willingly  in  the  direction  of 
an  object  which  you  yourself  admit  is  desirable.  Do  you 
think  it  altogether  proper  for  one  gentleman  to  dictate  to 
another  how  he  shall  spend  his  own  money,  or  when  he  has 
spent  it  to  inform  him  that  it  was  improperly  done,  and  hint 
that  it  would  have  been  a  great  deal  better  if  he  had  appro- 
priated it  in  a  different  direction  ?  Intermeddling,  an  officious 
interference  with  the  pecuniary  expenditures  of  a  neighbor, 
of  a  fellow-citizen ,  dictating  to  him  as  to  its  appropriation  — 
what  is  it  ?  What  would  you  do  in  the  premises  ? 

Here  are  a  number  of  people  who  are  anxious  that  certain 
persons,  strangers  to  them,  should  be  taught  how  to  read  the 
Bible,  thinking  that  it  would  promote  their  happiness ;.  and 
thus  thinking,  they,  with  a  noble  consistency,  use  their  own 
money  largely  to  purchase  the  Bibles,  and  to  send  persons  to 
teach  how  to  use  them ;  and  here  is  a  man  in  Scotland,  a  cul- 


356  BODILY  ENDURANCE. 

tivated  scholar,  raised  in  the  bosom  of  the  church,  engaging 
without  fee  or  reward  in  an  effort  to  throw  ridicule  on  the 
attempts  of  those  benevolent  men  ;  and  in  order  to  make  his 
shafts  more  efficient,  falsifies  history,  falsifies  fact.  Verily, 
we  can  scarcely  imagine,  under  all  the  circumstances,  a 
greater  depth  of  innate  malignity  against  the  Christian  reli- 
gion. There  is  one  man  totally  depraved ,  and  the  depth  of  the 
blackness  is  unmistakable.  The  great  burden  of  Bible  teach- 
ing is  love  to  all  human  kind,  industry  in  all  human  callings, 
temperance  in  all  human  enjoyments,  and  unflinching  justice 
in  all  human  transactions  ;  a  book  which  encourages  no  wrong- 
doing ;  which  winks  at  no  vice,  tolerates  no  crime  ;  and  here 
is  a  man  who  seeks  to  thwart  the  efforts  of  nobler  hearts  to 
make  this  book  available  to  the  millions  of  our  earth,  who 
else  will  die  without  its  sight  —  opposing  these  efforts  on  the 
ground  that  they  cost  too  much  money,  not  a  dollar  of  which 
was  his.  How  deeply  dark,  how  unfathomably  mean  must 
that  man's  heart  be  !  what  a  disgrace  to  the  noble  land  which 
gave  him  birth  !  May  he  live  to  feel  ashamed  of  all  that  he 
has  written. 

So  far  from  Christian  missions  being  a  failure,  one  single 
individual  within  a  single  lifetime  has  been  the  means  of  ini- 
tiating instrumentalities  which  have  done  more  to  break  up  the 
slave  trade,  than  have  the  fleets  of  the  three  greatest  nations 
on  the  globe  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  ;  a  single  indi- 
vidual, by  shutting  himself  out  of  civilized  society  for 
eighteen  years,  consorting  with  savages,  traversing  deserts, 
swimming  rivers,  torn  by  wild  beasts,  famished  by  want,  and 
tortured  by  fiercest  fevers,  has  opened  a  door  to  the  civiliza- 
tion of  a  whole  continent,  occupied  by  millions  of  human 
beings  of  whose  existence  the  world  never  dreamed, — an 
interior  continent  with  its  fruitful  plains,  and  navigable  rivers, 
and  rich  forests,  — the  people  themselves  comparatively  harm- 
less, friendly,  and  docile  ;  and  this  man  is  a  Christian  mis- 
sionary, a  physician  —  Dr.  Livingstone,  who  has  "endured 
more  anxious  moments,  experienced  difficulties  and  perils, 
and  performed  grander  and  more  noble  deeds  than  any  Cri- 
mean hero  ;''  of  whom  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  declared,  "  His 
great  researches  and  operations  will  be  followed  by  great  and 
mighty  benefits  to  the  whole  human  race  ;  "  while  Colonel  Sir 


BODILY  ENDURANCE.  357 

R.  H.  Rawlinson,  the  learned  Oriental  traveller,  expressed  his 
belief  that  Dr.  Livingstone  had  laid  the  train  which  would 
raise  interior  Africa,  with  its  untutored  millions,  from  the 
depths  of  savage  degradation. 

This  unpretending  missionary  has  made  himself  old  in  forty 
years ;  his  face  is  furrowed  by  hardships  and  thirty  fevers, 
and  literally  black  by  exposure  for  sixteen  years  to  an  Afri- 
can sun ;  his  left  arm  crushed  and  made  helpless  by  a  fero- 
cious lion.  Having  passed  through  all  these  privations,  he 
made  a  journey  of  a  thousand  miles  on  foot,  and  then  farther 
on  into  an  unknown  country,  stopping  not  until  he  had  added 
to  his  discoveries  that  of  a  river  navigation  of  two  thousand 
miles.  And  while  he  has  done  so  much  for  humanity,  at  so 
much  personal  toil  and  suffering,  here  is  a  Scotchman  in  scho- 
lastic Edinburgh,  who  quietly  sits  down  in  his  own  study  and 
writes  "  Christian  Missions  a  Failure  " — "  cost  more  money 
than  the  benefits  attained  pay  for." 

The  life  of  the  great  missionary  presents  several  features 
of  physiological  interest. 

1.  The  constitution  of  man  adapts  itself  to  all  climates. 

2.  The  hardships  which  the  human  body  can  endure  are 
incredible  until  seen,  and  when  encountered  without  the  use 
of  spirituous  liquors,  leave  the  constitution  as  firm  and  as  capa- 
ble of  new  endurances  as  it  was  at  the  beginning.  • 

3.  In  all  great  undertakings  requiring    persistent   endur- 
ance of  toil,  and  privation,  and   exposure,  those  are  most 
likely  to  succeed  who  discard  alcoholic  drinks  of  every  de- 
scription, and  make  up  their  minds  to  the  temperate  indul- 
gence of  all  the  appetites. 

4.  Systematic  temperance  in  eating  and  drinking  is  capa- 
ble of  shielding  the  human  body  from  the  pestilences  of  all 
climes,  and  from  the  fatal  diseases  of  all  latitudes. 

5.  That  the  hardships  which  great  travellers  are  called  to 
encounter  do,   by  their  large  exposure  to  out-door  air  and 
daily  bodily  activity,  consolidate  the  constitution  and  make  it 
more  healthy,  while  the  mental  powers  take  their  share  of 
increased  vigor  and  activity. 


358  GETTING   WORSE. 


GETTING  WORSE. 

"THE  world  is  worse  than  it  used  to  was,"  is  the  expressed 
sentiment  of  many  a  poor,  unfortunate,  woe-begone,  used-up 
fellow.  His  face  is  as  long  as  a  fence  rail —  as  dolefully  seri- 
ous as  Dan  Tucker  without  his  dinner  —  as  blue  as  an  indigo 
bag.  He  lives  down  in  the  cellar  himself,  and  thinks  all  the 
world  is  doing  the  same  thing.  Being  of  no  account,  doing 
nothing,  he  thinks  all  creation  is  like  his  old  shoe,  "going 
down  heel,"  while  he  is  too  lazy  to  pull  it  up.  He  is  of  the 
Neverwas  family.  Everything  and  everybody  compares  un- 
favorably with  the  things  and  bodies  of  his  youth  ;  he  excepts 
himself,  of  course  ;  and  while  he  is  the  most  striking  illustra- 
tion of  going  backward,  he  is  a  firm  believer  that  he  alone  of 
all  creation  has  made  progress.  Who  are  the  people  that  will 
have  it  that  the  summers  are  hotter,  the  winters  colder,  the 
beef  tougher,  the  turkeys  smaller,  the  pigs  poorer,  the  pota- 
toes more  watery  ?  They  never  saw  the  eggs  so  small ,  or  corn- 
ears  so  short ;  the  girls  are  uglier,  the  boys  ruder ;  the  minis- 
ters don't  preach  as  much  gospel,  nor  judges  administer  the 
same  law  ;  the  sun  does  not  shine  so  bright,  nor  do  the  skies 
look  so  clear ;  there  is  less  color  in  the  grass  and  less  bloom 
on  the  rose.  In  short,  the  whole  world  is  getting  worse,  and 
they  are  tired  of  it  —  in  which  last  the  world  accords  its 
heartiest  reciprocity,  for  the  very  good  reason,  they  are  of  no 
account  to  anybody.  But  who  are  the  persons  most  given  to 
depreciate  the  present?  Not  the  money-making  man,  not  the 
energetic  mechanic,  who  finds  he  has  more  than  he  can  do ; 
not  the  clergyman,  whose  influences  for  good  pervade  a  whole 
community,  and  whose  pulpit  is  surrounded  by  respectful 
multitudes.  The  fact  is,  the  world  is  retrograding  only  to 
those  who  are  themselves  going  down  hill.  When  a  man 
begins  to  croak  about  "  hard  times,"  and  about  everybody  get- 
ting worse,  the  whole  world  included,  it  behooves  him  to  in- 
quire if  it  is  not  he  himself  who  is  thus  depreciating  in  value, 
in  his  industry,  his  activity,  his  sterling  worth,  and  his  high 
resolution.  Energetic  men  are  not  croakers.  The  resolute, 
and  those  whose  motto  is  "  Upward  " —  whose  actions  show 


SOAP  SUDS  AT  TEN  DOLLARS  A   GALLON.         359 

"progress," —  are  not  the  men  who  feel  disposed  to  believe  in 
coming  ruin.  No  ;  there  is  progress  everywhere  —  elevation 
in  precept  and  in  practice  everywhere  around  us.  In  all  call- 
ings do  liberal  views  prevail.  Take  the  whole  question,  and 
let  a  single  fact  decide  it.  Where  a  dollar  was  given  in  pri- 
vate charity  a  hundred  years  ago  to  found  a  college,  endow  a 
seminary,  build  a  hospital,  or  sustain  an  asylum,  millions  are 
now  bestowed.  A  hundred  years  ago  the  pence  only  were 
given  to  humanity ;  now  it  is  the  pound.  Be  of  good  cour- 
age, then,  ye  noble  workers  of  good  !  This  world  is  better  for 
your  life,  and  daily  is  rising  into  the  more  perfect  similitude 
of  what  it  shall  be,  when,  donning  its  millennial  garb,  it  shall 
be  the  sun  of  all  worlds  ! 


SOAP  SUDS  AT  TEN  DOLLARS  A  GALLON! 

A  MONEY-MAKING  business  that.  But  is  any  man  so  ver- 
dant as  to  pay  such  a  price  for  an  article  which  can  be  made 
for  six  cents  a  gallon?  Yes,  there  are  ten  thousand  men  and 
women  who  are  regular  customers,  and  have  been  for  years  in 
succession  —  at  least  so  we  judge  from  developments  made  at 
a  special  term  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  Judge  Duer  presiding.  On  the  hearing,  the  receipt 
for  making  the  "Balm  of  a  Thousand  Flowers"  was  produced, 
and  it  appeared  that  it  was  compounded  of  grease,  lye,  sugar, 
and  alcohol,  dignified  by  the  name  of  palm  oil,  potash,  &c. 
We  have  seen  it  recommended  in  the  papers,  with  various  cer- 
tificates, as  the  best  thing  in  the  world  to  make  the  hair  grow, 
to  keep  the  face  and  hands  clean,  and  to  perfume  the  whole 
body  generally.  It  so  happens  that  it  is  a  fact  that  soap  suds 
is  the  best  thing  known  to  keep  people  clean,  to  shave  with, 
or  to  make  the  hair  grow,  when  it  can  be  made  at  all,  or  to 
keep  it  from  falling  out  when  it  has  been  brought  to  that  state 
by  plastering  the  scaip  and  hair  with  hogs'  lard,  or  any  other 
form  of  fat,  for  months  in  succession  —  this  same  oil  being 
"  good  for "  making  all  floating  dust  and  dirt  adhere  to  the 
hair,  when  in  a  reasonable  time  a  layer  of  grease  and  dirt  is 
found  spread  over  the  scalp,  closing  up  the  pores,  destroy- 


360  AN  EAST  DEATH. 

ing  the  vitality  of  the  hair,  causing  it  to  fall  out  by  the 
roots.  Under  such  circumstances,  the  "Balm  of  a  Thousand 
Flowers  "  is  truly  a  useful  article,  for  its  thorough  application 
will  be  followed  by  the  growth  of  the  hair,  when  it  has  been 
prevented  from  growing  by  accumulated  filth,  or  by  se- 
vere sickness.  But,  then,  soap  suds  will  do  the  same  thing, 
by  adding  a  little  spirits  of  hartshorn  or  alcohol.  In  our 
judgment,  therefore,  there  is  no  hair  tonic  known  more  effi- 
cient and  appropriate  for  the  masses  than  a  bottle  of  "  Balm 
of  a  Thousand  Flowers,"  at  one  dollar,  or  half  a  pint  of  soap 
suds  at  one  cent.  Similar  percentages  do  patent  medicines 
yield,  with  the  drawback,  however,  of  their  failing  uniformly 
to  meet  the  reasonable  expectations  of  the  purchasers. 


AN  EASY  DEATH. 

NOT  the  least  of  all  the  rewards  of  a  life  of  systematic  tem- 
perance, is  that  of  an  easy  death.  The  whole  machinery  of 
the  body  wears  out  together.  Its  fly-wheels  and  its  rollers, 
its  cogs,  its  scapements,  and  its  springs,  lose  all  their  power 
by  equal  and  slow  degrees.  No  one  part  runs  on  in  the  full 
vigor  of  its  newness  while  others  are  wholly  incapacitated. 
"  He  suffered  a  thousand  deaths  in  his  last  illness,"  is  the 
familiar  description  of  the  closing  scene  of  many.  And  why? 
Because  one  part  of  the  complicated  machinery  had  worn  out 
before  its  time,  from  having  been  overtasked,  or  had  been 
made  a  wreck  of  by  destructive  habits  or  exposures.  It  is 
the  being  "temperate  in  all  things"  to  which  the  sacred 
Scriptures  attach  the  blessing  of  the  life  that  now  is,  as  well 
as  of  that  which  is  to  come ;  to  which  we  may  allowably 
attach  the  meaning,  enjoyment  of  to-day,  exemption  from 
suffering  on  to-morrow.  Present  health  and  an  easy  death 
are  the  uniform  perquisites  of  those  who  obey  the  Scripture 
injunction  in  the  love  of  it. 

No  less  a  violation  of  the  inflexible  law  of  our  being  is  it  to 
wear  out  the  throat  by  vociferous  preaching ;  or  the  voice 
organs  by  injudicious  singing ;  or  the  brain  by  ruthless  habits 
of  mental  appliances  ;  or  the  eyes  by  persistence  in  night 


SLEEP  OF  CHILDREN.  361 

study ;  or  the  imagination  by  unlicensed  delving  into  the 
"  hidden  wisdom,"  in  order  to  be  wise  above  that  which  is 
written  ;  or  the  stomach  by  taxing  it  daily  with  a  labor  it  was 
never  formed  to  accomplish  ;  or  the  hands  themselves,  or  feet, 
by  imposing  a  task  on  their  capabilities  which  they  were 
never  made  to  endure ;  we  say  these  are  no  less  infractions 
of  physical  law  than  are  wilful  violations  of  written  moral 
precepts.  As  to  the  latter,  we  have  an  "  Advocate  "  who  can 
"  clear  "  us  ;  from  the  former  no  power  can  deliver,  short  of 
the  miraculous,  and  that  it  is  useless  to  expect. 

It  is  the  regular  and  temperate  who  live  long.  It  is  the 
very  old  who  die  without  sickness  or  pain  —  whose  lamp  of 
life  goes  out  as  gently  as  the  last  flicker  of  an  expiring  candle. 
Cornaro  died  at  ninety-six,  without  the  illness  of  a  day.  Old 
Aunt  Hay  died  among  the  nineties,  without  the  sickness  of 
an  hour.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Davies,  of  England,  had  no  disease 
of  any  kind  during  his  life  except  poor  sight,  and  died  at  the 
age  of  a  hundred  and  five  years. 

If,  then,  we  covet  an  "  easy  death  "  as  to  the  body,  let  us 
obey  the  Book  of  books  in  being  "  temperate  in  all  things." 

And  more,  if  we  would  "  die  easy"  as  to  the  more  immortal 
part,  the  soul,  let  us  still  cling  to  the  guardianship  of  that 
sacred  volume,  and  be,  like  Cornelius,  men  "without  guile," 
striving  "  to  have  always  a  conscience  void  of  offence  toward 
God  &nd  toward  men." 


SLEEP  OF   CHILDREN. 

MANY  a  bright  and  beautiful  child  is  destroyed,  or  made 
idiotic  for  life  by  their  nurses,  in  one  of  two  ways. 

By  the  administration  of  laudanum,  paregoric,  opium,  or 
other  form  of  anodyne. 

By  teaching  self-abuse,  in  order  that  the  exhaustion  it  pro- 
duces should  promote  sleep. 

Medical  books  abound  in  cases  of  this  lamentable  character. 
How  to  guard  against  them  with  most  efficacy,  is  worthy  of 
inquiry. 

All  children,  under  five   years  of  age,  will  be  made  the 


362  TROUBLE  KILLS. 

better,  healthier,  happier,  and  more  good-natured,  by  an  un- 
disturbed sleep  of  one  or  two  hours  in  the  forenoon. 

Children  under  eighteen  months  may  require  two  day-naps 
in  summer  time. 

If  a  child  is  regularly  put  to  sleep  at  the  same  time,  for 
only  three  or  four  days  in  succession,  the  habit  will  so  rapidly 
grow  upon  it,  that  with  the  aid  of  quiet  and  a  little  darkening 
of  the  room,  it  will,  if  well,  fall  to  sleep  within  a  few  minutes 
of  the  time,  for  weeks  and  months  in  succession  :  such  is  na- 
ture's love  for  system  and  regularity. 

We  appeal,  then,  to  every  mother,  as  she  values  the  securi- 
ty, the  health,  happiness,  and  sanity  of  her  children,  to  adopt 
this  inflexible  rule.  Never  allow  a  child  to  be  put  to  sleep 
by  any  servant,  on  any  pretence  whatever,  nor  permit  it  to  go 
to  sleep  at  any  other  than  the  regular  time ;  and  then  put  the 
child  to  sleep  yourself,  and,  if  properly  managed,  all  that  you 
have  to  do  is,  to  take  the  child  to  a  quiet,  darkened  room, 
place  it  in  the  bed  with  a  few  affectionate  words,  uttered  in  a 
kindly  tone,  leave  it,  and  it  will  be  asleep  in  five  minutes, 
without  rocking,  singing,  coaxing,  or  anything  else. 

It  is  wonderful  how  soon  a  child  learns  to  do  a  thing  as  a 
matter  of  course,  when  it  is  put  in  a  proper  habit  by  a  quiet 
and  kindly  firmness. 

By  such  a  plan  of  operation,  it  will  be  seen  that  all  induce- 
ment to  make  a  child  sleepy,  by  either  of  the  fearful  practices 
named,  is  taken  away  from  the  servant.  To  all  mothers  we 
say,  you  cannot  safely  trust  your  children  out  of  your  sight 
with  one  servant  in  a  million  ;  and,  least  of  all,  to  one  of  the 
plausible  sort,  who  have  a  ready  "  O  yes,  ma'am,"  to  every 
inquiry  or  request  you  have  to  make. 


TROUBLE  KILLS. 

THE  secret  sorrow  of  the  mind,  a  sorrow  which  must  be 
kept,  how  it  wilts  away  the  whole  man,  himself  all  uncon- 
scious, meanwhile,  of  its  murderous  effect !  He  cannot  feel 
that  he  is  approaching  death,  because  he  is  sensible  of  no 
pain  ;  in  fact  he  has  no  feeling,  but  an  indescribable  sensation 


TROUBLE  KILLS.  363 

perceived  about  the  physical  heart.  Lord  Raglan,  command- 
er-in-chief  of  the  British  army  before  Sebastopol,  the  bosom 
friend  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  for  forty  years,  —  of  whom 
partial  friends  have  often  said,  "  his  character  seemed  without 
a  flaw,"  -  —  such  a  man  died,  figuratively,  of  a  broken  heart. 
In  a  moment,  almost,  trouble  came  like  a  whirlwind ;  ava- 
lanche followed  avalanche,  in  such  quick  succession,  that  no 
time  was  left  for  the  torn  spirit  to  rise  above  its  wounds. 
The  British  government,  quailing  before  popular  clamor,  left 
the  brave  old  man  to  bear  the  brunt  alone,  because  it  could 
not  afford  to  recall  him,  and  yet  had  not  the  courage  to  sus- 
tain him.  While  the  tone  of  official  communications  deprived 
him  of  his  sleep,  weighing  heavily  upon  him  and  breaking  his 
gallant  spirit,  the  failure  at  the  Redan  closely  followed.  On 
reaching  headquarters,  a  letter  was  in  waiting,  which  an- 
nounced the  death  of  the  last  surviving  member  of  a  large 
family  of  brothers  and  sisters ;  the  next  day,  the  death  of  a 
general,  his  old  companion  in  arms.  Next  came  the  news 
that  the  gallant  son  of  Lord  Lyons  was  sinking  under  his 
wounds.  These  things,  coming  so  rapidly  one  after  another, 
in  the  course  of  a  few  hours,  as  it  were,  caused  such  a  change 
in  his  appearance,  all  unknown  to  himself  however,  that  his 
physician  had  to  request  him  to  take  to  his  bed,  and  within 
forty-eight  hours  he  died,  without  supposing  himself  to  be  in 
any  danger  whatever. 

Within  a  year  a  worthy  lady  in  Ohio  sickened,  in  conse- 
quence of  some  wholly  groundless  rumors  affecting  her  char- 
acter in  the  community  into  which  she  had  recently  moved. 
She  knew  they  were  groundless  ;  she  knew  the  motives  of  the 
miserable  wretches  who  originated  them ;  but  her  delicate 
and  sensitive  spirit  shrunk  before  the  shock,  retreated  within 
itself,  and,  all  torn  and  bleeding,  she  died  ! 

Within  a  few  months,  a  most  excellent  clergyman  found  the 
feelings  of  his  people  so  generally  against  him  that  he  resigned 
his  office.  The  resignation  was  accepted  ;  but  all  under  such 
circumstances,  that  it  was  really  a  dismissal,  and  that,  too, 
for  causes  which  ought  to  have  made  every  member  of  the 
community  stand  up  to  him  like  a  man.  Conscious  of  his 
integrity,  and  feeling  that  he  had  been  badly  dealt  with,  his 
sensibilities  received  a  shock  which  carried  him  to  a  prema- 
ture grave  in  a  few  days. 


364  CHAPPED  HANDS. 

M  You  are  worse  than  you  should  be  from  the  fever  you 
have.  Is  your  mind  at  ease?  "  said  a  quick-sighted  physician 
to  a  sleepless,  wasting  patient.  "  No,  it  is  not,"  was  the 
frank  reply,  and  the  last  recorded  words  of  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
whose  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  and  "  The  Deserted  Village  " 
will  only  die  with  the  English  language.  Died  at  the  age  of 
forty-six,  of  a  malady  of  the  mind,  from  blasted  hopes  and 
unkind  speeches  of  the  world  around  him  1  He  was  a  man 
whose  heart  was  large  enough  and  kind  enough  to  have  made 
a  whole  world  happy,  whose  troubles  arose  from  his  humani- 
ty ;  yet  the  base  things  said  of  him,  so  undeserved,  so  malig- 
nant and  untrue,  "  broke  his  heart." 

In  view  of  these  facts,  let  parents  early  impress  on  the 
minds  of  children,  It  is  not  what  they  are  charged  with,  but 
what  they  are  guilty  of,  that  should  occasion  trouble  or  re- 
morse ;  that  a  carping  world  should  not  blanch  the  cheek  or 
break  the  spirit,  so  long  as  there  is  conscious  rectitude  within. 

And  let  all  learn  what  the  commonest  humanity  dictates,  to 
speak  no  word,  write  no  line,  do  no  deed,  which  would 
wound  the  feelings  of  any  human  creature,  unless  under  a 
sense  of  duty,  and  even  then,  let  it  be  wisely  and  long  con- 
sidered. 


CHAPPED  HANDS. 

THIS  is  an  annoyance  in  winter-time ;  while  to  keep  them 
soft  and  white  is  sometimes  very  desirable.  To  do  this,  wash 
the  hands  not  more  than  once  or  twice  a  day,  and  always  in 
water  a  little  warm,  using  the  finest,  purest  white  soap. 
Rinse  them  well,  so  that  the  soap  be  entirely  removed,  then 
wipe  them  with  a  soft,  dry  towel,  closing  the  operation  by 
rubbing  the  hands  with  one  another  very  freely  until  there  is 
a  feeling  of  comfortable  softness  in  them. 

At  bed-time,  especially  of  the  coldest  days,  a  few  drops  of 
sweet  oil  should  be  most  thoroughly  rubbed  with  one  hand 
into  the  other.  If  coal  must  be  handled,  or  fires  made  or 
replenished,  do  not  go  near  the  fire  until  a  pair  of  gloves, 
lined  with  some  soft  material,  are  put  on. 


A   WIFE  WORTH  HAVING.  365 


A  WIFE   WORTH    HAVING. 

A  LADY  writes,  "At  present  I  do  all  my  own  work,  cook 
for  five  in  family,  sweep,  dust,  and  build  fires ;  take  care  of 
my  two  little  ones,  teach  eight  piano  pupils,  giving  to  each 
two  hours  a  week,  give  three  lessons  a  week  to  a  class  in 
vocal  music,  besides  classes  in  the  school-room  several  hours 
every  day.  In  addition,  I  canvass  for  pupils,  receive  our 
friends,  retire  at  half  past  eleven,  and  rise  at  five  in  the 
morning.  But  I  find  my  eyes  growing  heavy,  and  my  bones 
ache  with  servitude." 

Who  does  not  feel  that  a  woman  of  such  energy  ought  to 
succeed?  Who  does  not  regret  that  she  should  be  called 
to  perform  labors  so  multifarious  and  so  incongruous.  In 
view  of  this,  there  are  multitudes  of  married  women,  not 
"wives,"  who  may  well  hide  their  faces  in  shame,  who,  with 
no  larger  family,  have  a  cook  and  housemaid,  and  yet  are 
ceaselessly  complaining  of  how  much  trouble  they  have,  how 
they  are  worn  out  with  work  ;  who  can  dilate  indefinitely  on 
the  hardness  of  their  lot,  and  who,  without  earning  a  dollar  a 
week,  complain  of  being  tired  of  living  in  such  destitution, 
and  cry  and  pout  by  the  hour  whenever  a  coveted  silk  dress, 
or  beauty  of  a  bonnet,  or  love  of  a  point-lace  collar  or  cuff  is 
not  procured,  on  the  slightest  intimation  of  being  wanted  — 
we  do  not  say  M  asked  for."  There  are  women  who  think 
themselves  descending,  to  ask  their  husbands  for  anything ; 
who  want  money  placed  where  they  can  get  it  at  will, 
without  any  account  of  its  expenditure ;  women  who,  in  the 
vacillation  of  business,  meet  the  prudent  suggestions  of  re- 
trenchment with  impatient  reproaches,  if  not  with  downright 
epithet  and  rage;  who  never  inquire,  "Can  we  afford  it?" 
who  cannot  brook  the  delay  of  a  few  days,  until  the  "  quar- 
ter's rent "  is  paid ;  who  would  not  fail  to  be  present  at  the 
"  opening "  of  an  autocratic  milliner,  even  if  it  risked  their 
husband  a  bank  protest. 

What  was  the  manner  of  the  rearing  of  such  wives  ?  As 
daughters,  they  were  allowed  to  have  their  own  way ;  every 
wish  was  gratified,  every  obstacle  was  removed  from  their 


366  TEE  AIR   WE  BREATHE. 

path  without  any  effort  of  their  own.  They  were  never 
allowed  the  opportunity  of  a  self-denial,  and  were  practically 
taught  that  the  convenience  and  comfort  of  mother,  father, 
brothers,  everybody,  must  be  sacrificed  to  their  own ;  hence 
they  grew  up  selfish,  impatient  of  control,  and,  too  often,  to 
their  own  undoing  and  that  of  their  husbands. 


THE  AIR   WE  BREATHE. 

THE  air  we  breathe  is  composed  of  one  part  oxygen  and 
four  parts  nitrogen.  The  former  supports  life,  the  latter  ex- 
tinguishes it.  The  more  oxygen  there  is,  the  livelier,  the 
healthier,  and  the  more  joyful  are  we ;  the  more  nitrogen, 
the  more  sleepy,  and  stupid,  and  dull  do  we  become.  But 
if  all  the  air  were  oxygen,  the  first  lighted  match  would  wrap 
the  world  in  instant  flame ;  if  all  were  nitrogen,  the  next 
instant  there  would  not  be  upon  the  populated  globe  a  single 
living  creature. 

When  oxygen  was  discovered  by  Priestly,  nearly  one  hun- 
dred years  ago,  there  was  a  universal  jubilation  among 
doctors  and  chemists.  The  argument  was  plausible,  and 
seemed  perfectly  convincing,  "  If  oxygen  is  the  life  and  health 
of  the  atmosphere,  as  we  have  found  out  how  to  make  oxygen, 
we  have  only  to  increase  the  quantity  in  the  air  we  breathe, 
in  order  to  wake  up  new  life,  to  give  health  to  the  diseased, 
and  youth  to  the  aged."  But,  on  trial,  it  was  found  that  it 
made  a  man  a  maniac  or  a  fool,  and,  if  continued,  a  corpse. 
Various  other  experiments  have  been  made,  to  improve  upon 
the  handiwork  of  the  all-wise  Maker  of  the  universe  ;  but  they 
have  been  successive  failures,  and  thinking  men  have  long 
since  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  as  there  can  be  no  improve- 
ment upon  the  cold  water  of  the  first  creation  in  slaking 
thirst,  so  there  can  no  addition  be  made  to  pure  air  which 
will  better  answer  its  life-sustaining  purposes.  And,  as 
there  is  not,  in  all  nature,  a  still,  warm  atmosphere,  that  does 
not  instantly  begin  to  generate  decay,  corruption,  and  death, 
so  there  is  no  chamber  of  the  sick,  graduated  to  a  degree, 
that  will  not  hasten  the  end  desired  to  be  averted.  Nor  is 


"FIFTEEN  TEARS  IN  HELL."  367 

there  an  atom  in  nature  which  can  add  to  the  health  and  life- 
giving  influence  of  the  pure  air  of  heaven  ;  for,  if  it  displaces 
the  oxygen,  in  the  same  proportion  does  it  diminish  its  life  ; 
and,  if  it  displaces  the  nitrogen,  just  to  the  same  extent  does 
it  loosen  the  conservative  power  of  nature,  and  kindle  up  a 
fever  which  is  to  burn  up  the  body. 


"FIFTEEN  YEARS  IN  HELL!" 

"  FIFTEEN  years  in  hell !  "  as,  with  a  stamp  of  the  foot,  he 
dashed  on  the  table  the  pen  which  had  just  made  him  a  bank- 
rupt and  a  beggar,  was  the  exclamation  of  a  gentleman  of 
sixty,  who  had  been  born  and  reared  in  luxury  and  wealth. 
This  excellent  man,  in  the  course  of  business,  had  become 
involved,  but  was  hoping  and  striving,  as  honorable  men  do, 
to  "work  out  of  his  embarrassments  ;  "  and,  for  all  that  long 
time,  he  did  work,  and  worked  hard, — allowed  himself  no 
indulgences,  sacrificed  his  large  property  freely,  whenever 
necessary  to  "  meet  an  engagement."  But  all  would  not  do  ; 
and  he  closed  the  strife  by  saying,  "  I  am  old,  and  poor,  and 
have  no  home  !  " 

Not  long  ago,  a  gentleman  who  had  failed  in  business,  but 
had  subsequently  paid  all  his  debts,  and  was  now  acting  in  a 
capacity  which,  while  it  involved  no  pecuniary  responsibility, 
Avas  sufficient  to  enable  him  and  his  family  to  live  comfortably, 
said,  "  I  am  one  of  the  happiest  men  in  New  York,  and  no 
amount  of  money  could  induce  me  to  repeat  my  former  career. 
I  could  not  do  it.  The  efforts  to  keep  up  the  name  of  our 
firm  would  now  eat  out  my  mind." 

Another  gentleman,  still  in  active  business,  who  lives  in  his 
own  house,  and  who  is  adding  to  his  fortune  every  year,  said, 
with  the  seriousness  of  a  man  who,  in  a  moment's  retrospec- 
tion, had  lived  over  the  strifes  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  of 
business,  "  Could  I  have  known,  the  day  I  entered  New  York 
a  poor  boy,  the  cares  and  anxieties  which  I  have  had  to  en- 
counter, Manhattan  Island,  and  all  that  is  upon  it,  would  not 
have  presented  the  slightest  inducement  to  undertake  the 
task." 


368  "FIFTEEN  TEARS  IN  HELL:' 

Within  a  mouth  a  gentleman,  whose  "house,"  in  a  single 
year,  cleared  six  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  legitimate  busi- 
ness, has  been  sent  to  the  lunatic  asylum,  and  has  since  died, 
at  an  age  but  little  beyond  that  at  which  men  are  fairly  pre- 
pared to  live  to  purpose. 

Little  does  the  careless,  and  penniless,  and  light-hearted 
passer-by  of  the  splendid  palaces  of  Fifth  Avenue,  and  Union 
Square,  and  Fourteenth  Street,  imagine  what  storms  of  passion 
and  of  fear,  what  wrecks  of  heart  and  hope,  what  withering 
of  the  sweet  joys  and  anticipations  of  youth,  what  a  drying  up 
of  the  better  and  purer  feelings  of  our  nature,  these  stately 
mansions  have  sometimes  cost  their  owners. 

"  What  did  that  house  cost  you  ?  "  is  not  an  infrequent  in- 
quiry. "  I  am  ashamed  to  tell  you ; "  or,  "  More  than  it  is 
worth,"  is  a  very  common  response.  The  true  answer,  in  too 
many  instances,  is,  "It  has  cost  me  my  soul." 

To  maintain  a  good  name  at  bank,  at  the  exchange,  or  on 
the  "  street,"  is  an  idolatry  with  many  New  Yorkers  ;  and  to 
that  idol,  rather  than  be  sacrificed,  men  will  offer  heart,  con- 
science, independence,  everything.  A  good  name,  certainly, 
can  never  be  overvalued  ;  it  is  worth  more  than  millions  of 
money  to  the  man  in  business  ;  it  is  as  much  his  duty  as  his 
interest  to  maintain  it  at  any  pecuniary  cost,  at  any  personal 
sacrifice ;  and  it  is  highly  creditable  to  our  business  commu- 
nity that  so  honorable  a  feeling  generally  prevails.  But  the 
error  consists  in  men  placing  themselves  in  positions  which 
present  the  strongest  of  all  possible  temptations  to  sacrifice 
independence,  and  heart,  and  conscience,  in  order  to  maintain 
their  standing  in  the  business  world.  Beyond  all  question, 
the  great,  the  most  universal  error  of  the  age  in  this  country 
is  the  disregard  of  the  scriptural  warning  against  "hasting  to 
be  rich ;  "  and  this  neglect  brings  with  it,  in  multitudes  of 
cases  which  we  never  dream  of,  the  premature  decay  of  body 
and  mind  together,  and,  in  the  sweeping  ruin,  carries  with  it 
down  to  death,  truth,  manliness,  heart,  conscience,  all!  — 
confirming  the  saying,  "  They  that  will  be  rich  fall  into  temp- 
tation, and  a  snare,  and  into  many  foolish  and  hurtful  lusts, 
which  drown  men  in  destruction  and  perdition;  —  which, 
while  some  coveted  after,  they  have  erred  from  the  faith,  and 
pierced  themselves  through  with  many  sorrows."  And  again, 


TEA  DRINKING. 

"He  that  maketh  haste  to  be  rich  shall  not  bo  innocent." 
"  He  that  hasteth  to  be  rich  hath  an  evil  eye,  and  considereth 
not  that  poverty  shall  come  upon  him." 


TEA  DRINKING. 

IF  the  question  be  narrowed  down  to  "Tea,  or  no  Tea," 
we  advocate  the  weed.  The  world  will  be  the  happier  and 
healthier  by  the  moderate  use  of  any  of  the  China  teas,  in 
their  purity,  than  without  them.  The  immoderate  use  of 
cold  water  is  prejudicial  to  health,  whether  as  a  drink  or  a 
lavement,  and  so  is  the  immoderate  use  of  bread  and  butter. 
It  is  the  argument  of  a  fanatic  to  say,  that,  because  the  ex- 
cessive use  of  anything  is  injurious,  it  should,  therefore,  be 
discarded  altogether. 

Chemistry  decides  that  the  essential  elements  of  coffee  and 
tea  are  identical,  and  are  nutritious. 

Tea  is  a  stimulant,  and  so  is  any  other  nutritive  article. 
That  which  imparts  no  stimulus  is  not  fit  for  food.  An  ordi- 
nary meal  stimulates  the  pulse  to  a  greater  activity  by  five  or 
ten  per  cent. 

Tea,  being  used  warm,  and  at  meal-time,  promotes  diges- 
tion by  its  warmth,  as  any  other  warm  drink  would  do. 

Any  cold  drink,  even  water,  taken  at  meal-time,  arrests  the 
progress  of  digestion,  until  it  is  raised  to  a  heat  of  about  a 
hundred  degrees,  and,  if  that  arrest  be  too  long  protracted, 
convulsions  follow,  and  sometimes  death,  —  as  has  happened 
to  children  many  times,  by  eating  a  couple  of  hard-boiled 
eggs  hastily,  or  upon  an  empty  stomach,  or,  indeed,  eating 
much  of  any  indigestible  article. 

Thus  it  is,  that,  as  far  as  the  use  of  tea  at  our  meals  banishes 
the  use  of  cold  water  at  meals,  it  is  a  safeguard. 

Late  and  hearty  suppers  destroy  multitudes,  either  out- 
right in  a  night,  or  in  the  insidious  progress  of  months  and 
years.  It  is  almost  the  universal  custom  to  take  tea  for  sup- 
per. It  is  a  stimulant.  It  aids  the  stoma'ch  in  digesting 
more  than  it  would  have  done,  just  in  proportion  to  its 
stimulating  qualities.  And,  as  all  eat  too  much  at  supper- 


370  TEA  DRINKING. 

time,  the  general  use  of  warm  tea,  as  a  drink,  at  the  last 
meal  of  the  day,  is  beneficial  in  the  direction  just  named. 

True  wisdom  lies  in  the  moderate  use  of  all  the  good 
things  of  this  life. 

It  is  stated  that,  at  a  tea-party  of  sixty  old  women,  in 
England,  it  was  ascertained  that  they  were  the  mothers  of 
eight  hundred  and  sixty-nine  children. 

The  presumption  is,  that  these  women  were  tea-drinkers 
habitually,  and  it  is  equally  inferable  that  they  did  not  drink 
it  very  "weak;"  yet  they  were  healthy  enough  to  be  old, 
and  healthy  enough  to  be  the  mothers  of  large  families.  An 
isolated  fact  proves  nothing,  but  this  one  is  suggestive. 

It  is,  then,  safer  and  healthier  to  take  a  cup  of  warm  tea 
for  supper,  than  a  glass  of  cold  water. 

With  our  habits  of  hearty  suppers,  it  is  better  to  take  a  cup 
of  warm  tea,  than  to  take  no  drink  at  all. 

By  the  extravagant  use  of  tea,  many  persons  pass  their 
nights  in  restlessness  and  dreams,  without  being  aware  of 
the  cause  of  it.  We  advise  such  to  experiment  on  them- 
selves, and  omit  the  tea  altogether  at  supper,  for  a  few  times, 
and  notice  the  result. 

If  you  sleep  better,  it  is  clear  that  you  have  been  using  too 
much  tea,  in  quantity  or  strength. 

In  order  to  be  definite,  we  consider  the  following  to  be  a 
moderate  use  of  tea :  A  single  cup  at  each  meal,  as  to  quan- 
tity ;  as  to  strength,  measure  it  thus :  put  a  teaspoonful  in  a 
hot  teapot ;  pour  on  a  quart  of  boiling  water ;  two  thirds  of 
a  teacup  of  this,  adding  a  third  of  cream,  or  boiling  milk,  or 
hot  water,  with  sugar  or  not ;  this  is  strong  enough. 

We  believe  that  such  use  of  China  teas,  by  excluding  cold 
drinks  at  our  meals,  and  by  their  nutritious  and  pleasantly 
stimulating  character,  may  be  practised  for  a  lifetime  to  very 
great  advantage,  without  any  drawback  whatever ;  coffee  also. 

We  believe  that  the  world,  and  all  that  is  created  upon  it, 
is  for  man ;  and  that  the  rational  use  of  its  good  things  will 
promote  the  health  and  happiness  of  all  mankind. 


COLD  BATHING.  371 


COLD  BATHING. 

WE  detest  cold  bathing,  in  summer  or  winter,  except  it  be 
to  jump  into  a  river,  splurge  about  for  two  or  three  minutes, 
and  then  dress,  and  walk  home  as  hastily  as  possible.  All 
animate  nature,  except  the  hydric,  instinctively  shrinks  from 
the  application  of  cold  water,  if  in  health.  Everybody  knows 
that  cold  water  cannot  wash  the  hands  clean,  and  yet  whole 
tomes  are  scribbled  about  the  purifying  effects  of  cold  water. 
Cold  water  kills  more  than  it  cures.  Hundreds  of  children 
are  killed  every  year  by  fanatical  mothers  sousing  them,  head 
and  ears,  in  cold  water  every  day. 

We  never  saw  a  modern  bath-tub  until  we  were  thirty  years 
of  age,  and  ever  since  the  sight  we  have  not  ceased  to  hate  it 
with  great  cordiality,  on  account  of  the  mischief  which  it  con- 
stantly occasions. 

The  ordinary  use  of  a  bath-tub  is  an  indecency.  A  great 
deal  of  stuff  is  printed  about  the  bathing  habits  of  the  ancients, 
about  the  Eastern  nations,  and  their  love  of  the  bath.  What 
if  they  did  love  it  ?  The  ancients  have  all  gone  to  grass  long 
ago,  and  "  Eastern  nations"  are  going  to  pot  as  fast  as  possi- 
ble, individually  and  collectively  !  The  average  of  human  life 
is  shorter,  by  many  years,  among  the  Eastern  peoples  than 
among  the  Western.  Of  three  hundred  inhabitants  in  the 
United  States,  only  four  persons  die  every  year,  while  six  die 
in  England,  and  eight  in  France,  and  the  farther  we  go  "east" 
the  greater  is  the  mortality.  As  to  the  United  States,  it  is 
the  healthiest  country  on  the  globe,  as  a  whole  ;  according  to 
the  last  statistics,  Virginia,  the  very  embodiment  of  the 
"  Great  Unwashed,"  is  the  healthiest  of  her  healthy  sisters,  and 
next  comes  North  Carolina,  all  smoked  with  pine  knots,  and 
begrimed  with  coal-dust  and  tar :  and  it  is  doubtful  if  one  in 
ten  thousand  of  its  families  ever  saw  a  modern  bath-tub. 

How  many  of  our  grandsires,  now  hale  and  hearty  at  three- 
score and  ten,  ever  felt  a  shower-bath,  or  jumped  into  a  tub 
of  cold  water  to  wash  themselves?  Who  are  they,  amongst 
the  beautiful  women  of  present  or  past  time,  whose  cheeks  are 
the  softest,  and  remain  the  longest  free  from  the  wrinkles  of 


372  COLD  BATHING. 

age  ?  They  are  those  who  never  washed  their  faces  in  cold 
water;  and  if,  indeed,  they  were  washed  at  all,  it  was  done 
with  warm  water,  or  spirits  of  wine,  as  practised  in  the  times 
of  Louis  Quatorze.  Soft  as  velvet  is  the  cheek  of  infancy; 
and  it  only  grows  harsh,  and  hard,  and  rough  as  the  practice 
gains  of  washing  them  with  cold  water. 

A  pig  gets 'no  cleaner  by  wallowing  in  a  puddle ;  yet  men 
and  women  wallow  in  a  bath-tub,  diluting  the  excretions  from 
nameless  parts  of  the  person,  to  come  in  contact  with  the 
cleaner  hands  and  face,  and  even  lips,  it  may  be  ! 

People  talk  glibty  about  the  bathing  habits  of  Eastern  na- 
tions, and  the  cleanliness  of  the  Houris,  who  grace  the  Turkish 
harem,  and  then  we  essay  an  imitation  in  this  fashion :  A 
Turk  takes  a  hot  bath,  we  take  a  cold  one ;  we  jump  into  a 
bath-tub,  a  thing  which  no  decent  Turk  ever  does.  We  ques- 
tion if  there  is  a  single  bath-tub  in  all  the  dominions  of  the 
Sultan,  unless  it  be  the  pet  property  of  some  water-mad 
Yankee.  A  Turk  washes  himself  under  a  stream  of  running 
water,  after  a  vigorous  first-scrubbing ;  so  that  no  impure 
particle,  loosened  from  one  part  of  the  body,  can,  by  possi- 
bility, come  in  contact  with  the  body  again.  We  wash  our- 
selves in  bath-rooms  as  cold  as  Greenland  :  the  Turk  cleanses 
himself  in  an  apartment  almost  as  hot  as  an  oven.  We  really 
cannot  see  how  a  man  can  make  himself  clean  in  a  bath-tub, 
after  the  usual  fashion. 

The  sum  of  the  whole  matter  is  this :  If  we  want  to  cul- 
tivate habits  of  personal  cleanliness  and  health,  let  us,  at 
rational  intervals,  say  once  a  week,  have  a  room,  in  fire-time, 
which  shows  seventy  degrees  of  Fahrenheit,  and  with  strong 
soap-suds  and  a  hog's-hair  brush,  let  the  whole  body  be  most 
thoroughly  scrubbed,  almost  as  effectually  as  if  we  were 
rubbing  a  grease  spot  out  of  a  plank  floor,  then  let  the  whole 
surface  be  rinsed  with  warm  water,  running  from  the  spigot. 
When  that  is  done,  an  instantaneous  souse  in  a  bath-tub,  or 
better  still,  a  bucket  of  cold  water  dashed  on  the  head,  fallirig 
all  over  the  naked  person,  and  then  to  be  wiped  dry  and  dress 
in  two  minutes  —  that  indeed  is  a  glorious  luxury  to  any 
grown  person  not  an  invalid.  That  "  taking  a  bath  "  requires 
the  exercise  of  a  sound  judgment,  and  that  without  this,  it  is 
not  unattended  with  fatal  consequences,  New  Yorkers  especial- 


WEARING  FLANNEL.  373 

ly  have  recently  had  some  sad  lessons.  The  lovely  young 
wife  of  our  national  representative  at  Home  went  from  the 
dinner-table  to  a  warm  bath,  and  died  in  a  few  hours.  One 
of  our  most  distinguished  lawyers,  the  state's  attorney,  we 
believe,  was  found  dead  in  his  bath-room.  Mortimer  Living- 
ston, one  of  New  York's  noblest  merchants,  '*  took  a  bath  one 
morning,  remaining  in  the  water  a  long  time.  On  coming 
out,  he  complained  of  cold  over  his  entire  person,  and  all  the 
means  made  use  of  to  restore  warmth  failed;  he  lingered 
a  while,  and  died  in  a  few  days,  aged  fifty  years,"  in  the  very 
prime  of  life  !  Bishop  Heber,  the  author  of  that  charming 
hymn,  "From  Greenland's  Icy  Mountains,"  died  from  the 
effects  of  a  bath :  and  how  many  thousands  of  children  are 
annually  hurried  into  the  grave  by  injudicious  washings,  we 
will  not  hazard  to  conjecture. 

Let  those  who  are  wise  learn  from  these  things  a  lesson ; 
and  let  none  controvert  the  statements  made  but  those  who 
know  something,  and  can  give  whole  facts. 


WEARING  FLANNEL. 

PUT  on,  the  first  week  of  November,  a  good,  substantial, 
old-fashioned,  home-made,  loose,  red  woollen  flannel  shirt,  and 
do  not  lay  it  aside  for  a  thinner  article,  at  least  until  the  first 
day  of  May,  even  in  the  latitude  of  New  Orleans.  We  advise 
the  red,  because  it  does  not  full  up,  thicken,  and  become 
leathery  by  wearing. 

Wear  it  only  in  the  daytime,  unless  you  are  very  much  of 
an  invalid ;  then  change  it  for  a  similar  one  to  sleep  in  — 
letting  the  two  hang  alternately  on  a  chair  to  dry  in  a  warm 
dry  room. 

If  leaving  it  off  at  night  gives  you  a  cold,  never  mind  it ; 
persevere  until  you  take  no  more  cold  by  the  omission.  No 
one  ceases  to  wear  shoes  because  they  caused  corns  ;  it  is  the 
proper  use  of  things  which  makes  them  innocuous.  The  less 
you  wear  at  night,  the  more  good  will  your  clothing  do  you 
in  the  daytime.  Those  who  wear  a  great  deal  of  clothing  at 
night,  must  wear  that  much  more  in  the  day,  or  they  will  feel 


374  WEARING  FLANNEL. 

chilly  all  the  time ;  and  our  own  observation  teaches  us,  that 
the  people  who  muffle  up  most  are  the  most  to  complain  of 
taking  cold. 

But  why  wear  flannel  next  the  skin,  in  preference  to  silk  or 
cotton  ? 

Because  it  is  warmer ;  it  conveys  heat  away  from  the  body 
less  rapidly ;  does  it  so  slowly,  that  it  is  called  a  non- 
conductor; it  feels  less  cold  when  we  touch  it  to  the  skin 
than  silk  or  cotton. 

If  the  three  are  wetted,  the  flannel  feels  less  cold  at  the 
first  touch,  and  gets  warm  sooner  than  silk  or  cotton,  and 
does  not  cling  to  the  skin  when  damp  as  much  as  they  do. 
We  know  what  a  shock  of  coldness  is  imparted  to  the  skin 
when,  after  exercise  and  perspiration,  an  Irish  linen  shirt 
worn  next  the  skin  is  brought  in  contact,  by  a  change  of 
position,  with  a  part  of  the  skin  which  it  did  not  touch  a  mo- 
ment before — often  sending  a  shivering  chill  through  the 
whole  system. 

A  good  deal  has  been  said  and  written  about  silk  being  best 
on  account  of  its  electrical  agencies ;  but  all  that  is  guess- 
work. We  are  mere  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  when  we  talk 
about  that  subtle  agent ;  and  until  we  know  more  of  it,  it  is 
the  greater  wisdom  to  be  guided  by  our  sensations. 

Another  reason  why  woollen  flannel  is  better  is,  that  while  cot- 
ton and  silk  absorb  the  perspiration,  and  are  equally  saturated 
with  it,  a  woollen  garment  conveys  the  moisture  to  its  outside, 
where  the  microscope,  or  a  very  good  eye,  will  see  the  water 
standing  in  innumerable  drops.  This  is  shown  any  hour,  by 
covering  a  profusely  sweatihg  horse  with  a  blanket,  and  let 
him  stand  still.  In  a  short  time  the  hair  and  inner  surface 
of  the  blanket  will  be  dry,  while  the  moisture  will  be  felt  on 
the  outside.  If  we  would  be  wise,  we  must  use  our  senses, 
and  observe  for  ourselves. 

Some  persons  prefer  white  flannel,  which  may  be  prevented 
from  fulling  up  if  first  well  washed  in  pretty  warm  soap-suds, 
then  rinsed  in  one  water  as  hot  as  can  be  well  borne  by  the 
hand.  After  being  once  made,  a  woollen  white  flannel  shirt 
should  never  be  put  in  cold  water,  but  always  washed  as  above, 
not  by  putting  soap  on  it,  but  by  washing  it  in  soap-suds,  not 
very  hot. 


HOT-AIR  FURNACES.  375 


HOT-AIR  FURNACES. 

HOT-AIR  furnaces  ought  not  to  be  tolerated  ;  they  ruin  the 
wood-work  of  any  building,  ruin  the  furniture,  and,  more 
than  all,  impair  the  health  of  every  person  who  breathes  the 
atmosphere  of  houses  thus  heated  by  them.  Warm  air  relax- 
es, debilitates,  the  world  over ;  cool  air  braces  up,  gives  tone, 
vigor,  power,  to  the  whole  frame. 

Warm  air  evaporates  every  article  that  has  moisture  in  it, 
—  fluids,  meats,  vegetables  —  everything:  these  particles  are 
distributed  all  through  the  air  of  the  house,  to  the  exclusion, 
to  that  extent,  of  the  life-giving  oxygen ;  so  that  not  one  sin- 
gle breath  of  pure  air  is  taken  into  the  lungs,  as  long  as  the 
person  occupies  such  a  house ;  and  when  it  is  remembered 
that  during  the  most  inclement  season  of  the  year  there  are 
days,  even  weeks,  during  which  the  very  young  and  the  very 
old  of  the  family,  as  also  the  invalids,  do  not  pass  outside  the 
door,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  there  is  not  one  day, 
during  all  the  winter,  in  which  health  dwells  in  any  house- 
hold so  warmed.  But  a  great  deal  of  the  ill  effect  of  furnace- 
heated  rooms  may  be  obviated,  if  the  fireplace  is  always 
kept  open ;  but  in  very  cold  weather  there  should  be  fire  in 
the  fireplace,  in  order  to  create  a  more  decided  draught 
towards  it,  so  as  to  promote  a  circulation,  and  carry  the  bad 
air  more  rapidly  up  through  the  chimney,  and  out  of  the 
building. 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  and  an  almost  universal  one,  that  sud- 
den changes  from  one  temperature  to  another  are  prejudicial 
to  health.  If  persons  will  close  their  mouth,  and  send  all  the 
air  to  the  lungs  through  the  circuit  of  the  head,  and  thus  tem- 
per it  to  the  air  of  the  lungs,  a  positive  benefit  will  result, 
although  there  may  be  a  change  of  forty  degrees  in  a  second 
of  time.  Only  one  precaution  is  needed  :  Shut  your  mouth, 
and  keep  moving. 

The  proof  of  all  this  is,  railroad  conductors  are  healthy 
men,  as  a  class,  and  yet  their  changes  are  fifty  degrees,  hun- 
dreds of  times  in  a  day. 

In  addition,  it  is  known  to  all  persons  of  observation,  that 


376  BUCKWHEAT  CAKES. 

the  inhabitants  of  the  equable  and  moderate  climates  are  not 
long-lived.  The  "  Italian  skies,"  and  the  "  South  of  France," 
so  much  boasted  of,  do  not  give  length  of  days  to  those  who 
enjoy  their  balmy  atmosphere. 

Our  graudsires  lived  in  cosy  parlors,  and  fireplace  heated 
dining-rooms,  with  passages  and  halls  as  cold  as  Greenland, 
and  yet  they  boast  a  higher  health  than  their  degenerate  sons 
and  daughters.  These  are  facts,  and  they  ought  to  have  a 
rational  consideration.  Down,  we  say,  with  every  hot-air 
furnace  in  the  land  ! 


BUCKWHEAT   CAKES. 

BUCKWHEAT  cakes  and  molasses  make  a  favorite  dish  for 
multitudes  in  winter  time.  Why  not  in  summer,  also?  We 
need  in  winter  the  food  which  contains  most  carbon ;  that  is, 
the  heat-producing  principle,  something  which  will  keep  up 
the  internal  fires,  to  compensate  for  the  external  cold.  Meats, 
everything  containing  fat,  are  largely  made  of  carbon  ;  hence, 
we  instinctively  eat  heartily  of  meats  in  winter,  but  have  small 
appetite  for  them  in  summer.  The  same  instinct  receives 
greedily  the  buckwheat  cakes  in  winter,  and  turns  from  them 
in  summer,  while  other  forms  of  bread  materials,  meal  and 
flour,  are  -desired  all  the  year.  It  is  because  buckwheat 
cakes  are  superior  to  bread  as  to  fatty  matter,  while  the  syrup 
and  butter  used  with  them  are  almost  entirely  of  carbon  ;  so 
that  there  is  nothing  more  suitable  for  a  winter  morning's 
breakfast  than  buckwheat  cakes  and  molasses.  In  New  York, 
where  almost  every  kitchen  is  under  the  same  roof  with  the 
dining-room  and  parlors,  the  fumes  arising  from  the  baking 
of  the  cakes  on  the  ordinary  iron  instrument,  which  requires 
greasing,  are  not  very  desirable ;  this  may  be  obviated  by 
using  a  soapstone  griddle,  which  does  not  require  to  be 
greased  to  prevent  the  cakes  from  sticking.  Children  and 
delicate  persons  should  use  the  finest  white  flour  of  buck- 
wheat. The  robust,  who  exercise  or  work  a  great  deal  in 
the  open  air,  should  use  the  buckwheat  flour  which  contains 
all  the  bran,  because  the  bran  is  the  richest  pail,  yielding 
more  nutriment  and  strength. 


THE  HUMAN  HAIR.  377 

^ 

If  any  unfortunate  dyspeptic  cannot  tolerate  them,  such  a 
one  has  only  to  let  them  alone,  and  there  will  be  more  of  this 
luxury  left  to  those  who  can  eat  them  with  pleasure  and  im- 
punity, having  had  the  wit  to  avoid  eating  them  like  a  glut- 
ton. The  simple  fact  that  any  given  item  of  food  "  is  not 
good  for  "  one  man,  —  does  not  "  set  well  "  on  the  stomach,  — 
is  no  proof  that  it  is  not  positively  beneficial  to  others ;  it  is 
simply  a  proof  that  it  is  not  good  for  him.  This  is  a  practi- 
cal thought  of  considerable  importance. 


THE   HUMAN  HAIR. 

BALDNESS  is  considered  a  great  calamity  by  many.  It  is 
brought  on,  in  many  cases,  by  wearing  the  hat  too  constantly, 
or  by  any  other  means  which  keeps  the  head  too  warm.  An- 
other cause  of  baldness  is  the  filthy  practice  of  keeping  the 
hair  soaked  in  various  kinds  of  grease,  or  allowing  the  scalp 
to  remain  unwashed  for  weeks  and  months  together.  Instead 
of  throwing  money  away  for  any  of  the  thousand  inert,  if  not 
hurtful  "  hair  restoratives,"  which  meet  the  eye  in  every  paper, 
our  readers  Avould  do  well  to  at  least  try  the  following  wash  : 
Pour  three  pints  of  hot  water  on  four  handfuls  of  the  stems 
and  leaves  of  the  garden  "  box,"  boil  it  for  fifteen  minutes 
in  a  closed  vessel,  then  pour  it  in  an  earthen  jar,  and  let  it 
stand  ten  hours ;  next  strain  the  liquid,  and  add  three  table- 
spoonfuls  of  cologne  water ;  wash  the  head  with  this  every 
morning.  It  is  cleansing  and  tonic,  and  if  the  root-bulbs  of  the 
hair  are  not  destroyed  (which  is  the  case  where  the  scalp 
looks  smooth  and  shiny,  and  then  there  is  no  remedy),  the 
hair  will  begin  to  grow  with  vigor.  If  this  wash  fails  after 
a  few  weeks  perseverance,  the  baldness  may  be  considered 
incurable,  because  the  structure  of  hair  growth  is  destroyed, 
the  cogs  and  wheels  are  gone,  and  no  power  can  replace 
them  short  of  that  which  made  them  first. 

But  a  more  certain  and  more  easily  understood  method  of 
restoring  the  hair,  when  such  a  thing  is  possible,  is  to  strive 
to  secure  a  larger  share  of  general  health ;  keeping  the  scalp 
clean,  in  the  mean  while,  by  the  judicious  application  of  a 


378  THE  HUMAN  HAIR. 

moderately  stiff  brush,  and  a  basin  of  plain,  old-fashioned 
soap-suds ;  for,  as  a  general  rule,  baldness  arises  from  one  of 
three  things,  —  inattention,  which  brought  on  a  decline  of 
health,  dirt,  or  stupidity.  What,  for  example,  could  a 
woman  expect  better  than  an  unsightly  broad  path  of  skull 
along  the  line  where  the  hair  is  parted  in  front,  when  she 
has  kept  each  particular  hair  on  a  constant  strain  at  the  root, 
at  the  same  identical  spot,  from  earliest  "teens"  to  thirty, 
instead  of  changing  the  line  slightly  every  month  or  two,  or 
giving  entire  rest,  by  having  no  parting  at  all,  but  to  carry 
the  hair  backward  for  a  mouth  or  two  at  a  time,  or  adjust  it 
in  any  way  which  a  correct  taste  and  a  sense  of  appropriate- 
ness will  readily  suggest  to  a  quick-witted  woman.  In  this 
way  the  delicate  line  of  parting  may  be  made  to  look  rich 
and  young  to  the  confines  of  old  age. 

The  judicious  cultivation  of  the  hair  —  that  natural  orna- 
ment, of  which,  when  possessed  in  its  abundance,  richness, 
and  beauty,  all  are  pardonably  proud  —  is  most  unaccounta- 
bly neglected ;  for  we  are  all  conscious  of  the  fact,  that  if  the 
hair  is  plentiful,  and  is  handled  with  a  pure  taste,  it  will  add 
to  the  impressiveness  of  any  set  of  features. 

As  it  is,  the  hair  begins  to  fall  before  our  girls  are  out  of 
their  "  teens."  In  a  room  full  of  them,  not  one  in  a  half 
dozen  can  boast  of  anything  on  the  "  back  head  "  but  a  knot 
about  the  size  of  a  hickory  nut.  If  appearances  are  to  the 
contrary,  it  will  be  found  that  it  is  a  borrowed  ornament, 
whose  original  owner  is  in  the  grave,  or  has  parted  with  it  for 
a  few  pennies,  or  glazy  ribbon,  or  gaudy  handkerchief,  to 
"  raise  another  crop  "  just  as  rich  and  beautiful.  The  girls  of 
Brittany,  and  the  lower  Pyrenees,  repair  to  the  annual  "  hair 
fairs  "  in  droves,  where  each  one  waits  her  turn  for  shearing, 
with  her  rich  long  hair  combed  out,  and  hanging  down  to  the 
waist.  The  most  valued  head  of  hair  brings  five  dollars,  and 
down  to  twenty  cents,  according  to  quantity  and  quality. 
One  dollar,  in  fiery  ribbons,  violent  colored  calicoes,  and  the 
like,  is  the  average,  bringing  double  these  prices  when  taken 
to  the  Paris  and  London  wholesale  dealers.  The  weight  of  a 
marketable  head  of  hair,  when  first  taken  from  the  head,  is 
from  twelve  to  sixteen  ounces,  or  from  three  quarters  of  a 
pound  to  a  pound  ;  under  twelve  not  being  "  accepted,"  and 


THE  HUMAN  HAIR.  379 

over  a  pound,  or  sixteen  ounces,  especially  if  silken  and  long, 
bringing  fabulous  prices.  Rare  qualities  have  been  sold  at 
double  the  price  of  silver,  weight  for  weight.  Two  hundred 
thousand  pounds  of  hair  are  shorn  from  the  heads  of  young 
girls  every  year,  to  supply  the  demands  of  the  Paris  and  Lou- 
don  markets,  and  from  these  we  derive  our  supplies. 

The  hair  "  growers  "  seem  to  be  rather  a  degraded  set  of 
people,  living  in  mud  huts,  in  filthy  community,  garments  so 
patched  and  worn  as  to  scarcely  hold  together  by  their  own 
weight.  For  once,  at  least,  fashion  bows  to  profit,  and  the 
richest  and  most  luxuriant  head  of  black  hair  is  accounted  an 
incumbrance.  Caps  are  worn  by  these  people,  so  as  to  con- 
ceal the  hair  almost  entirely.  So,  as  far  as  personal  appear- 
ance is  concerned,  it  would  seem  of  very  little  consequence 
whether  they  had  any  hair  or  not.  But  an  important  practi- 
cal hint  may  be  taken  from  this  historical  fact.  Caps  being 
thus  worn,  there  is  no  need  for  combs  and  pins,  and  plaits  and 
ties,  and  as  a  consequence  no  hair  is  strained  at  its  roots,  nor 
is  it  distorted  by  being  pulled  against  the  grain  —  against  its 
natural  direction. 

The  Mauillans  have  the  longest,  blackest,  and  most  glossy 
hair  in  the  world.  They  do  not  wear  caps  at  all,  but  allow 
the  hair  to  fell  back  behind  in  its  own  natural  looseness. 
Taking  these  two  facts  together,  it  would  seem  that  one  con- 
dition for  having  a  fine  head  of  hair  is,  that  it  should  never  be 
on  a  strain,  and  should  hang  pretty  much  in  the  direction  of 
its  growth,  or  if  diverted  at  all,  as  from  over  the  face,  it 
should  be  in  a  gentle  curve  over  and  behind  the  ears,  with  a 
loose  ribbon  to  keep  it  from  spreading  too  much  at  the  back 
of  the  neck,  the  hair  hanging  its  length  down  the  back. 

The  girls  of  Brittany  wear  their  hair  under  their  caps,  so  as 
to  conceal  it  entirely,  and  those  of  Manilla,  having  theirs  still 
longer,  more  glossy  and  abundant,  wear  no  caps  at  all,  but 
allow  it  to  fall  loose  over  the  shoulders.  One  instructive 
circumstance  connected  with  this  richness  of  female  orna- 
ment is,  that  in  both,  one  condition  is  present ;  the  hair  is  not 
strained  against  its  natural  direction,  nor  indeed  is  it  strained 
at  all.  But  there  is  one  or  other  condition  in  the  case  of  the 
Manillans,  which  may  aid  in  causing  that  superiority  in  length, 
glossiness,  and  abundance  —  it  is  not  braided  or  tied,  or 


380  THE  HUMAN  HAIR. 

knotted  up  ill  any  way,  but  floating  in  perfect  freedom  :  a 
thorough  ventilation  is  allowed.  It  has  been  found  by  observ- 
ant ladies,  that  when  nature  is  aided  in  respect  to  ventilation, 
by  redding  the  hair  very  gently  and  freely  night  and  morning 
with  a  fine-tooth  comb,  its  richness,  glossiness,  silkiness,  and 
length  are  all  increased,  as  the  following  incident,  related  by 
a  traveller,  strikingly  illustrates.  He  stated  that  he  fell  in 
with  a  man,  whose  bearing  indicated  that  he  was  a  gentleman, 
one  of  position,  and  of  unusual  scholastic  attainments ;  but 
without  these,  there  was  a  singularity  about  him  which  would 
have  forcibly  arrested  the  attention  of  the  most  careless  ob- 
server :  his  hair  was  the  longest,  most  abundant,  the  most 
silkenly  beautiful,  that  he  had  ever  observed  in  man,  or  woman 
either ;  and  more,  he  seemed  to  bestow  a  large  share  of  his 
attention  upon  it,  and  he  was  evidently  proud  of  it.  He 
spent  a  great  part  of  his  time,  when  not  necessarily  engaged 
otherwise,  in  combing  it,  exhibiting  in  the  operation  a  careful- 
ness, a  delicate  and  gentle  tenderness,  amounting  almost  to  an 
affection.  At  night,  he  bound  it  up,  so  as  not  to  be  strained 
or  tangled  in  any  manner.  Our  traveller's  curiosity  was 
excited,  and  he  rested  not,  until  he  learned  that  the  gentleman 
in  question  was  a  minister  of  some  religious  sect,  and  that  his 
order  was  debarred  every  personal  adornment,  except  that  of 
the  hair,  which  was  allowed  to  be  cultivated  and  worn  to  any 
desired  extent.  The  priest  gave,  as  his  opinion,  that  the  suc- 
cess of  his  cultivation  depended  on  gently  combing  it  a  good 
deal  in  the  direction  in  which  it  grew,  and  preventing  all 
strain  be}roud  that  of  its  own  weight. 

This  mode  of  treating  the  hair  is  strikingly  opposed  to  that 
prevalent  among  us ;  the  practice  being  to  begin,  in  almost 
infancy,  to  part  the  hair  in  front,  and  plait  it,  and  knot  it,  and 
strain  it,  almost  to  pulling  it  out  sideways,  crossways,  and 
upwards  ;  the  ingenuity  being  taxed  apparently  to  strain  it  in 
every  direction,  so  it  be  contrary  to  that  which  it  would 
naturally  take ;  not  only  so,  but  the  meanwhile  it  is  kept 
saturated  with  any  and  every  kind  of  grease,  tallow,  hog's  fat, 
and  rancid  butter,  disguised,  intermixed,  or  partially  purified, 
and  then  with  a  flourish  of  trumpets  and  certificates,  written 
by  knavery,  signed  by  stupidity,  and  published  abroad  un- 
blushingly  to  the  end,  that  while  the  fabricators  and  falsifiers 


THE  HUMAN  HAIR.  381 

make  money,  our  daughters'  heads  become  mangy,  the  hair 
dropping  out,  the  scalp  becoming  diseased,  giving  headaches, 
dulness,  smarting  eyes,  and  a  dozen  other  correlative  symp- 
toms. Then  comes  a  subterfuge  and  a  degradation  both 
together,  in  order  to  make  up  for  the  deficiency,  and  some 
dead  corpse  is  robbed,  or  some  filthy  Breton  or  Manillau  is 
despoiled,  the  deception  not  being  known  until  the  marriuge 
ceremony  has  made  it  too  late  to  be  remedied.  Out  upon  it, 
we  say  !  these  shams  of  ivory,  and  cotton  batting,  and  hair  of 
people  dirty  or  dead.  Why,  most  of  us  young  men,  if  we 
marry  at  all,  have  to  risk  marrying  parts  of  half  a  dozen  peo- 
ple at  once. 

The  lessons  learned  by  these  statements,  are,  — 

1.  The  hair  of  children  should  never  be  plaited,  or  braided, 
or  twisted,  or  knotted. 

2.  Nothing  should  ever  be  put  on  it  except  simple  pure 
water,  and  even  this  not  until  the  scalp  is  cleaned. 

3.  The  hair  should  be  kept  short.     It  would  be  a  valuable 
accomplishment,  if,  when  a  woman  becomes  a  mother,  a  few 
lessons  were  taken  from  a  good  barber,  so  that  the  child's  hair, 
after  the  third  year,  might  be  trimmed  by  its  mother  once  a 
week,  only  cutting  off  the  longest  hairs,  by  ever  so  little,  so 
as  to  keep  it  of  a  uniform  length.     This  practice  is  proper  for 
male  and  female,  old  and  young. 

4.  The  hair  should  be  always  combed  leisurely  and  for  some 
considerable  time,  at  least  every  morning,  and  neither  brush 
nor  comb  ought  to  be  allowed  to  pass  against  the  direction  of 
the  hair  growth. 

Pomatums  and  hair  oils,  and  washes  of  every  description, 
are  wholly  pernicious  and  essentially  disgusting,  because  they 
detain  on  the  hair  and  scalp  that  dust  and  those  animal  excre- 
tions, which  otherwise  would  fall  off  or  be  blown  away.  The 
most  perfect  cleanliness  of  the  scalp  should  be  sedulously 
labored  for,  the  first  step  being  that  of  pure  soft  water  (rained 
or  distilled),  applied  by  rubbing  it  in  upon  the  scalp  with 
the  "  balls  "  of  the  fingers,  thus  avoiding  wetting  the  whole 
mass  of  hair  when  long ;  after  it  is  thoroughly  dried,  then  it 
should  be  patiently  followed  by  a  brushing  in  its  dry  state,  in 
the  direction  of  its  growth.  This  is  most  assuredly  the  best 
way  to  give  the  hair  all  that  beauty  and  polish  of  which  it  is 


382,  THE  HUMAN  HAIR. 

susceptible.  It  is  abundantly  soon  to  allow  the  hair  of  girls 
to  begin  to  grow  long,  on  entering  their  fourteenth  year ;  nor 
should  it  be  allowed  to  be  parted  in  front  sooner  than  two  or 
three  years  later,  if  there  be  any  desire  to  have  the  "  parting  " 
delicate,  beautiful,  and  rich.  But  all  this  while,  there  should 
be  secured  the  same  perfect  cleanliness  of  scalp ;  the  same 
daily  ventilation  at  the  roots ;  the  same  daily  redding  and 
brushing  in  its  dry  state,  it  being  done  leisurely  and  long; 
while  the  clipping  should  be  made  every  fortnight,  but  only 
of  those  hairs  which  have  outgrown  the  others,  or  which  may 
have  "  split "  at  their  ends.  Do  not  "  thin  "  the  hair,  only  cut 
off  the  smallest  length  of  the  straggling  or  most  lengthy  ;  the 
object  being  a  greater  uniformity  as  to  length,  preventing 
thereby  any  undue  or  irregular  straining  in  handling. 

As  the  hair  of  most  persons  tends  to  curl  in  some  direction, 
that  direction  should  be  noticed  and  cultivated  when  a  beauti- 
ful curling  is  desired. 

As  a  general  rule,  we  would  discourage  any  application  to 
the  hair ;  but  if,  on  some  rare  occasion,  we  may  desire  to  give 
greater  firmness  or  durability  to  any  particular  adjustment  of 
it,  in  curling  or  otherwise,  a  very  weak  solution  of  isinglass  is 
the  best  thing  that  can  be  employed. 

And  if  at  times  any  "falling  off"  is  observed,  and  it  is 
desirable  to  arrest  it  sooner  than  mere  cleanliness  and  im- 
proved health  would  do  it,  one  of  the  most  accessible  washes 
is  boiling  water  poured  on  tea  leaves,  which  have  already 
been  used,  and  allowed  to  stand  twelve  hours ;  then  put  in  a 
bottle,  and  used  as  a  wash  to  the  scalp  :  it  should  be  of  mod- 
erate strength.  Another  good  wash  is  one  grain  of  spirits  of 
tannin,  and  six  ounces  of  spirits  of  Castile  soap,  well  rubbed 
in  the  head  every  morning,  a  tablespoonful  or  two  at  a  time, 
until  the  hair  ceases  to  fall  off. 

Curling  tongs  and  papers  are  destructive  to  the  hair.  If 
anything  is  used  on  an  uncommon  occasion,  it  should  be  silk, 
or  the  very  softest  paper,  as  near  the  color  of  the  hair  as  pos- 
sible. The  hair  should  not  be  tied  at  any  time  with  a  string, 
but  loosely  with  a  thin  soft  ribbon,  or  carried  in  a  loose  twist 
on  the  part  of  the  neck  about  the  line  of  the  hair,  so  as  to 
avoid  all  straining,  especially  against  the  direction  of  the  hair 
growth.  The  almost  universal  custom  of  our  women  to  draw- 


SELF-MEDICATION.  383 

ing  it  up  from  behind,  for  the  purpose  of  wearing  it  at  the 
back  of  the  head,  or  at  the  top,  is  contrary  to  good  taste  and 
physiological  wisdom,  the  great  point  being  to  wear  the  hair 
without  any  strain  upon  its  roots  beyond  its  own  weight,  and 
loosely,  so  as  to  afford  a  constant,  free,  and  thorough  ventila- 
tion. It  is  a  great  mistake  that  water  "  rots  "  the  hair ;  it  is 
accumulated  dust,  and  dirt,  and  grease  which  does  that.  Water 
lightly  applied  to  these  accumulations  becomes  hurtful,  by 
merely  softening  them,  but  if  pure  soft  water  is  cleansingly 
applied,  it  is  in  every  way  beneficial. 


SELF-MEDICATION. 

OF  any  four  persons  met  successively  on  the  street,  three 
will  strongly  inveigh  against  taking  medicine  and  against  the 
doctors,  and  multitudes  of  publications  are  scattered  through 
the  land  every  day  by  a  class  of  persons  as  reckless  and  im- 
pudent as  they  are  ignorant,  assuming  to  themselves  the 
name  of  "  reformers,"  their  papers  being  the  vehicles  of  their 
trumpery,  making  all  sorts  of  imaginary  and  impossible  state- 
ments as  to  the  ravages  of  what  they  call  "  druggery,"  and 
fighting  under  the  popular  banner  of  "temperance,"  with 
maudlin  professions  about  "progress,"  "human  amelioration," 
"  elevation  of  the  masses,"  "equality,"  "fraternity,"  and  all 
that ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  pandering  to  the  passions  of  a 
depraved  nature,  they  stab  secretly,  and  behind  and  under 
cover  of  false  garbs,  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  holy 
religion,  and  indeed  of  all  religion,  and  by  these  means  have 
got  up  such  a  hue  and  cry  against  physic,  that  even  medical 
men,  despicably  weak-minded,  of  course,  take  up  the  refrain, 
chime  in  with  the  prejudices  of  a  gullible  community,  and  are 
getting  into  the  way  of  prescribing  almost  no  medicine  at  all, 
in  cases  where  it  was  urgently  demanded ;  doing  violence  to 
their  own  better  judgment,  rather  than  incur  the  hazard  of 
censure,  in  case  the  disease  should  take  a  fatal  turn.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  among  the  people  themselves,  there  is  a  most 
extraordinary  paradox,  in  that  they  have  fallen  into  the  habit 
of  swallowing  medicine  on  their  own  responsibility,  or  by  the 


384  SOFTENING   OF  TEE  BRAIN. 

advice  of  any  ignoramus  or  knave  who  may  happen  to  fall  in 
with  them,  and  this,  too,  for  ailments  so  trifling  sometimes, 
that  simple  rest  and  warmth  for  a  few  hours  would  restore 
them  to  usual  health. 

Not  long  ago  a  lady  near  us  gave  a  little  girl  a  dose  of 
castor  oil  for  what  appeared  to  her  to  be  a  little  cold.  This 
acted  on  the  bowels  freely,  and,  by  weakening  the  system, 
took  from  it  the  power  of  throwing  out  the  real  disease  on  the 
surface,  and  the  only  child  of  wealthy  parents  died  in  forty- 
eight  hours  of  undeveloped  scarlet  fever. 

More  recently,  a  man  felt  unwell,  and  concluded  to  cure 
himself  by  mixing  with  a  pint  of  beer  a  tablespoonful  of  salt, 
a  raw  onion,  and  twenty-five  cents  worth  of  quinine.  Soon 
after  taking  it,  vomiting  set  in,  and  he  died  in  twenty-four 
hours.  Fools  cannot  die  off  too  soon  ;  but  we  earnestly  advise 
all  whose  lives  are  of  worth  in  the  community  in  which  they 
live,  that  in  any  case  where,  in  their  own  opinion,  they  are  ill 
enough  to  require  medicine,  swallow  not  an  atom  by  any- 
body's advice,  however  simple  the  remedy  may  appear,  but 
send  at  once  for  a  respectable  physician.  The  remedy  advised 
may  do  no  harm,  if  it  does  no  good ;  but  even  in  that  event,  it 
may  cause  a  loss  of  time  in  waiting  for  its  effects  which  no 
medical  skill  may  be  able  to  make  up  for. 


SOFTENING  OF  THE  BRAIN. 

SOFTENING  of  the  brain  is  a  disease  for  which  there  is  no 
known  remedy  ;  its  progress  is  slow,  steady,  and  resistless  as  an 
avalanche,  and  body  and  mind  go  out  together.  It  generally 
comes  on  with  a  gradual  loss  of  sight,  while  the  health  of  the 
remainder  of  the  body  is  usually  good.  The  younger  son  of 
the  "Iron  Duke"  died  of  this  disease,  which  is  becoming  of 
more  frequent  occurrence  than  formerly.  For  eight  long  years 
he  had  been  totally  blind,  and  had  amused  himself  with 
making  willow  baskets.  It  usually  attacks  men  who  have 
overworked  their  minds.  But  Lord  Charles  was  neither  a 
student  nor  a  rout;  but,  being  a  man  of  great  wealth,  he 
lived  at  his  ease.  There  were  no  sufficient  inducements  to 


DIETING  FOR  HEALTH.  385 

mental  and  bodily  activities  —  hence  mental  and  physical  stag- 
nation first,  then  disorganization ;  and  he  died  prematurely, 
in  the  midst  of  his  millions. 

Multitudes  think  it  a  hard  necessity  to  tug  and  toil  for  daily 
bread,  or  that  it  should  require  their  undivided  energies  of 
body  and  mind  in  planning,  and  contriving,  and  laboring  to 
maintain  their  position.  This  is  not  a  hard,  but  a  happy 
necessity,  as  these  very  activities  are  not  only  the  preserva- 
tives of  body  and  mind,  but  are  productive  of  those  utilities 
which  hasten  human  progress,  develop  our  powers,  elevate 
the  people,  and  happify  mankind. 


DIETING  FOR  HEALTH. 

DIETING  for  health  has  sent  many  a  one  to  the  grave,  and 
will  send  many  more,  because  it  is  done  injudiciously  or 
ignorantly.  One  man  omits  his  dinner  by  a  herculean  effort, 
and  thinking  he  has  accomplished  wonders,  expects  wonder- 
ful results  ;  but  by  the  time  supper  is  ready  he  feels  as  hungry 
as  a  dog,  and  eats  like  one,  fast,  furious,  and  long.  Next  day 
he  is  worse,  and  "don't  believe  in  dieting"  for  the  remainder 
of  life. 

Others  set  out  to  starve  themselves  into  health,  until  the 
system  is  reduced  so  low  that  it  has  no  power  of  resuscitation, 
and  the  man  dies. 

To  diet  wisel}r,  does  not  imply  a  total  abstinence  from  all 
food,  but  the  taking  of  just  enough,  or  of  a  quality  adapted  to 
the  nature  of  the  case.  Loose  bowels  weaken  very  rapidly  — 
total  abstinence  from  all  food  increases  the  debility.  In  this 
case  food  should  be  taken,  which,  while  it  tends  to  arrest  the 
disease,  imparts  nutriment  and  strength  to  the  system.  In 
this  case,  rest  on  a  bed,  and  eating  boiled  rice,  after  it  has 
been  parched  like  coffee,  will  cure  three  cases  out  of  four  of 
common  diarrhrea  in  a  day  or  two. 

Others  think  that  in  order  to  diet  effectually,  it  is  all-im- 
portant to  do  without  meat,  but  allow  themselves  the  widest 
liberty  in  all  else.  But  in  many  cases,  in  dyspeptic  con- 
ditions of  the  system  particularly,  the  course  ought  to  be 


386  SEASON  AND  INSTINCT. 

reversed,  because  meat  is  converted  into  nutriment  with  the 
expenditure  of  less  stomach  power  than  vegetables,  while  a 
given  amount  of  work  does  three  times  as  much  good,  gives 
three  times  as  much  nutriment  and  strength,  as  vegetable  food 
would. 


EEASON  AND  INSTINCT. 

THE  Power  which  sets  all  stars  and  suns  in  motion,  or- 
dained that  it  should  be  kept  in  continuance  by  inherent 
properties  :  we  call  it  Gravitation.  That  same  Power  stalled 
the  complex  machinery  of  corporeal  man,  and  endowed  it 
with  regulations  for  continuance  to  the  full  term  of  animal 
life ;  and  we  call  it  Instinct. 

The  irresponsible  brute  has  no  other  guide  to  health  than 
that  of  instinct ;  it  is  in  a  measure  absolutely  despotic,  and 
cannot  be  readily  contravened. 

By  blindly  and  implicitly  following  this  instinct,  the  birds 
of  the  air,  the  fish  in  the  sea,  and  four-footed  beasts  and 
creeping  things,  live  in  health,  propagate  their  kind,  and  die 
in  old  age,  unless  they  perish  by  accident  or  by  the  warfares 
which  they  wage  against  one  another ;  living,  too,  from  age 
to  age,  without  any  deterioration  of  condition  or  constitution  ; 
for  the  whale  of  the  sea,  the  lion  of  the  desert,  the  fawn  of 
the  prairie,  are  what  they  were  a  thousand  years  ago ;  and 
that  they  have  not  populated  the  globe,  is  because  they  prey 
on  one  another,  and  man,  in  every  age,  has  lifted  against 
them  an  exterminating  arm.  Man  has  instinct,  in  common 
with  the  lower  races  of  animal  existence,  to  enable  him  to 
live  in  health,  to  resist  disease ;  but  he  has,  in  addition,  a 
higher  and  a  nobler  guide  —  it  is  Reason.  Why  he  should 
have  been  endowed  with  this  additional  safeguard,  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  brute  creation  are  to  be  used  for*temporary 
purposes,  and  at  death  their  light  goes  out  forever ;  but  man 
is  designed  for  an  immortal  existence,  of  which  the  present 
life  is  the  mere  threshold.  He  is  destined  to  occupy  a  higher 
sphere,  and  a  higher  still,  until,  in  the  progress  of  ages,  he 
passes  by  angelic  nature ;  rising  yet,  archangels  fall  before 
him ;  and  leaving  these  beneath  and  behind  him,  the  regener- 


IN  THE  BLOOD.  387 

ated  soul  stands  in  the  presence  of  the  Deity,  and  basks  for- 
ever in  the  sunshine  of  his  glory. 

Considering,  then,  that  such  is  his  ultimate  destination,  it 
is  no  wonder  that,  in  his  wise  benevolence,  the  great  Maker 
of  us  all  should  have  vouchsafed  to  the  creature  man  the 
double  safeguard  of  instinct  and  of  a  diviner  reason ;  that 
by  the  aid  and  application  of  both  his  life  might  be  protected, 
and  protracted  too,  under  circumstances  of  the  highest  ad- 
vantage and  most  extended  continuance,  in  order  to  afford 
him  the  fullest  opportunity  of  preparing  himself  for  a  destiny 
so  exalted,  and  for  a  duration  of  ceaseless  ages. 


IN  THE  BLOOD. 

DYED  in  the  wool,  radical,  inherent,  of  a  piece,  — these  are 
various  forms  of  expression  intended  to  convey  one  and  the 
same  idea,  to  wit  a  part  of  a  chip  of  the  same  block.  But 
by  the  expression  "  in  the  blood,"  we  desire  here  to  convey  a 
moral  idea,  by  the  aid  of  a  medical  phrase ;  an  idea  repudi- 
ated by  multitudes,  abhorred  by  not  a  few,  but  true  for  all 
that,  as  the  following  narration  may  illustrate  :  A  city  mer- 
chant wanted  a  small  boy  in  his  store ;  one,  aged  ten  years, 
was  highly  recommended  by  a  lady,  who  guaranteed  his  good 
conduct,  she  having  befriended  and  aided  the  family  materi- 
ally, for  several  years,  since  their  arrival  in  this  country. 
The  youth  was  not  known  to  have  been  in  a  place  of  trust 
before.  He  proved  to  be  diligent  and  attentive ;  small 
pieces  of  money  were  brought  to  the  proprietor  from  time  to 
time,  as  picked  up  from  the  floor  in  sweeping  out,  and  there 
was  an  evident  effort  to  please.  Within  a  week  of  his  en- 
trance, stolen  property  and  money  were  found  in  his  pocket, 
which,  at  the  instant  before  discovery,  he  declared  contained 
nothing  whatever ;  but  it  did  contain  the  proprietor's  pocket- 
book,  with  money,  papers,  &c.  Here  was  a  systematic  effort 
of  a  mere  child,  begun  from  the  very  first  day  of  entering  the 
store,  by  an  appearance  of  strict  honesty  and  integrity  in 
trifling  matters,  to  throw  the  proprietor  off  his  guard,  to 
enable  the  child  to  steal  from  the  shelves  and  cash-box 


388  IN  THE  BLOOD. 

without  suspicion.  We  personally  knew  the  facts  of  the 
case,  and  can  account  for  such  precociousness  in  crime,  such 
adeptness  in  deception,  such  facility  and  aptitude  for  perpe- 
trating thefts,  in  no  other  way,  than  that  both  father  and 
mother  were  thieves  and  liars,  and  had  never  been  anything 
else,  having  been  indoctrinated  thus  for  perhaps  long  genera- 
tions preceding.  We  know  that  persons  are  born  with  the 
physical  characteristics  of  their  parents  —  born  with  their 
parents'  diseases.  Napoleon's  mental  nature  was  impregnat- 
ed from  his  mother  before  his  birth,  when  she  rode  by  her 
warrior  husband,  at  the  head  of  armed  bands,  for  days,  and 
weeks,  and  months  together;  while,  at  the  same  time,  he 
inherited  the  disease  of  his  father,  and  likewise  perished  with 
it.  It  is  notorious  that  three  fourths  of  the  idiotic  are  born 
of  parents,  one  or  both  of  whom  are  drunken  ;  shadowing  the 
state  of  mind  of  the  parent,  bestial,  stupid,  low,  at  the  instant 
of  conception,  as  the  mould  in  which  the  child  is  cast.  Some 
practical  use  may  be  made  of  these  things,  but  not,  we  pre- 
sume, until  the  human  mind  becomes  more  generally,  more 
thoroughly,  more  supremely  religious  from  principle,  high, 
uniform,  abiding.  What,  therefore,  physiology  teaches  of 
corporeal  man,  the  Bible  repeats  as  to  his  moral  nature,  in 
the  stern  declaration,  that  "  the  wicked  are  estranged  from 
the  womb  ;  they  go  astray  as  soon  as  they  be  born,  speaking 
lies."  That  it  is  just  as  natural  for  man  to  sin,  as  it  is  for  the 
sparks  to  fly  upward,  or  for  a  duck  to  take  to  the  water  the 
instant  it  breaks  from  the  shell.  Sin  and  crime  bring  desti- 
tution, disease,  and  death.  From  another  direction,  then,  we 
come  to  the  practical  conclusion,  that  the  time  for  impressing 
the  future  child,  with  the  greatest  certainty,  with  a  high 
moral  character,  is  during  the  months  preceding  its  birth, 
just  as  certainly  as  a  high  state  of  physical  health,  kept  up 
during  gestation,  is  one  of  the  most  certain  means  of  insuring 
a  good  constitution  to  the  coming  being. 

It,  therefore,  seems  to  follow,  that  all  modes  of  human  re- 
form, in  order  to  be  successful,  must  be  founded  on  truth,  and 
that  the  million  plans  which  have  been  spawned  forth  on  the 
world,  with  only  a  butterfly  life,  have  had  their  foundations 
laid  in  error,  in  false  doctrine,  and  that  false  doctrine  has 
colored  almost  every  system  of  human  amelioration  which  has 


HUNGER.  389 

ever  been  presented  ;  it  is  the  doctrine  of  human  perfectibility 
as  opposed  to  human  depravity,  innate  and  total :  a  depravity 
not  equally  deep  as  to  all,  but  a  depravity  of  varying  shades, 
pervading  all,  from  the  new-born  infant  to  the  centenarian. 
Owen  of  Lanark,  Cabot  of  Paris,  Communism,  and  the  Phi- 
lanstery,  all  foundered  here  ;  and  their  defeated  glorifiers,  now 
crimson  not  to  confess  that  their  systems  are  only  adapted  to 
the  unselfish ;  which  means  really,  that  to  succeed,  they  must 
have  perfect  men  to  begin  with  ;  but  ask  them  how  they  will 
make  men  perfect,  and  they  are  either  as  dumb  as  the  ass,  or 
utter  incoherent  ravings  about  education  and  the  elevation  of 
the  masses.  Then,  philosophers,  so  called,  may  blunder  and 
flounder,  and  prate  as  they  please,  but  it  all  comes  to  this  at 
last,  that  the  very  first  step  towards  human  elevation  is  in 
human  abasement;  each  man  for  himself  must  see,  and  feel, 
and  acknowledge  that  he  is  a  poor,  weak,  miserable  sinner, 
and  then,  in  the  light  of  the  Bible,  look  for  help  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Him,  who  is  able  to  elevate  and  save  all  who,  while 
looking,  believe  and  live. 


HUNGER. 

IF  a  man  in  good  health  has  not  eaten  anything  for  some 
days,  he  will  die  if  he  eats  heartily.  When  persons  are  found 
in  an  almost  starving  condition,  light  food,  in  small  quanti- 
ties, and  at  short  intervals,  is  essential  to  safety.  The  rea- 
son is,  that  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  feel  hungry,  the  stomach 
rolls  and  works  about,  and  continues  to  do  so,  unless  satis- 
fied, until  it  is  so  exhausted  that  there  is  scarcely  any  vital 
energy ;  it  is  literally  almost  tired  to  death,  and,  therefore, 
digestion  is  performed  slowly,  and  with  great  difficulty. 
Hence,  when  a  person  has  been  kept  from  eating  several 
hours  beyond  his  usual  time,  instead  of  eating  fast  and  hearti- 
ly, he  should  take  his  food  with  deliberation,  and  only  half  as 
much  as  if  he  had  eaten  at  the  regular  time.  Sudden  and 
severe  illness  has  often  resulted  from  the  want  of  this  precau- 
tion, and  sometimes  death  has  followed. 


390  MORAL  NUTRIMENT. 


MORAL  NUTRIMENT. 

WHOSE  mind  does  not  run  far  back  into  the  past  with 
sunny  memories  in  reading  the  dear  familiar  lines,  — 

"  In  works  of  labor  or  of  skill 

I  would  be  busy,  too, 
For  Satan  finds  some  mischief  still 
For  idle  hands  to  do  ?  " 

Lazy  people  eat  more  than  the  busy,  at  least  for  a  while, 
because  it  affords  them  enjoyment ;  it  is  a  standing  source  of 
gratification,  until  they  become  dyspeptic,  when  every  meal 
becomes  more  or  less  a  torture. 

But  want  of  occupation  has  its  attendant  moral  evils  as  well 
as  physical.  Idlers  are  nervous,  fretful,  peevish,  cross.  Ill- 
nature  becomes  a  second  nature,  and  they  grumble,  and  com- 
plain, and  whine  from  morning  until  night,  with  chance  inter- 
vals of  sunshine,  but  ever  so  transient. 

One  of  the  causes  of  the  deep  moral  degradation  of  many 
sailors,  is  want  of  occupation  in  the  interval  of  their  "  watches," 
especially  in  long  voyages.  We  have  many  a  time  and  oft 
been  with  them  in  the  forecastle,  from  the  full-rigged  ship 
down  through  bark,  and  brig,  and  schooner,  and  tiny  sloop, 
and  have  seen  and  heard  all  that  was  degrading  in  story,  and 
foul  in  act,  profane  and  beastly,  for  want  of  occupation  to  lead 
them  to  higher  things.  The  knowledge  of  this  has  led  us  for 
a  long  time  past  to  preserve  carefully  all  our  religious  ex- 
changes, our  agricultural  papers,  and  the  outside  half  sheet  of 
many  weeklies,  which,  for  safety  in  sentiment,  purity  of  teach- 
ing, and  courteousness  of  spirit,  favorably  compare  with  the 
religious  press.  For  these  a  friend,  whose  heart  is  in  the  right 
place,  comes  regularly  on  the  first  of  every  month.  No  win- 
ter's frost  or  summer's  fife  by  any  chance  keeps  him  away, 
although  gray  hairs  are  upon  him,  and  his  shadow  is  lengthen- 
ing for  the  grave ;  and  going  down  among  the  shipping,  he 
hands  them  to  the  sailors  of  such  vessels  as  are  just  weighing 
anchor,  for  the  chance  that  some  good  sentiment  may  strike 
their  attention  in  hours  of  quietude,  and  make  them  think  of 


MORAL  NUTRIMENT.  391 

home,  and  sisters,  and  mother,  and  minister,  the  country 
church,  the  graveyard  close  by,  and  of  heaven;  for  even 
transient  thoughts  like  these  have  a  restraining,  an  elevating, 
purifying  power.  "These  are  the  best  things  that  come 
aboard  for  my  men ;  they  keep  them  out  of  mischief,"  said 
Captain ,  of  the  steamship  Prince  Albert,  as  the  distrib- 
utor jumped  aboard  and  handed  him  a  large  bundle  of  read- 
ing matter.  "  We  don't  swear  half  so  much  when  we  have 
your  papers  to  read,"  said  a  hardy  Jack  tar.  These  two  un- 
varnished statements  are  full  of  meaning ;  and  we  trust  that 
our  readers  will  give  them  a  practical  turn,  by  carefully  pre- 
serving their  religious  papers  for  future  perusal.  A  good 
religious  newspaper  ought  not  to  be  destroyed ;  nor,  as  we 
think,  ought  it  to  be  laid  away,  to  become  moulded  and 
worm-eaten,  in  the  calculation  of  reading  it  again ;  for  it  is 
hiding  in  the  napkin  —  it  is  hoarding  up,  instead  of  putting 
out  at  interest.  We  have  many  times  copied  a  good  article, 
rather  than  mutilate  the  paper  which  contained  it,  thinking 
that,  if  it  did  us  good,  it  would  be  likely  to  do  as  great  a  good 
to  some  others,  or  a  dozen  others.  Further,  those  who  can 
write  well  for  their  favorite  paper,  who  can  throw  off  senti- 
ments sparkling  and  pure,  and  short,  terse,  striking,  and  do 
not  do  it,  are  responsible  to  humanity  and  to  God  for  the 
default. 

The  making  of  a  religious  newspaper  interesting,  useful, 
influential,  by  reason  of  the  sterling  character  of  its  reading 
matter,  ought  no  more  to  be  left  to  the  editor,  than  the  build- 
ing up  of  an  active,  efficient  church  society  should  be  left 
wholly  to  the  minister.  Every  man,  woman,  and  child 
ought  to  help  him  in  all  ways  possible ;  and  so  ought  the 
editor  to  have  the  sympathy,  encouragement,  and  literary 
help  of  every  reader  who  can  thus  contribute ;  for,  next  to 
the  minister,  a  well-conducted  religious  newspaper  is  an  in- 
strument for  present,  extensive,  enduring  good,  and  they  are 
essential  to  the  times,  as  counteracting  the  malign  influences 
which  are  scattered  with  a  reckless  hand  by  anonymous 
writers,  who  can  stab  from  behind  and  in  the  dark,  or  by 
those  who,  leaving  foreign  countries  for  their  country's  good 
and  their  own  safety,  boldly  solicit  to  be  made  the  paid  con- 
tributors of  our  best  papers ;  and,  having  left  home  disap- 


392  MORAL  NUTRIMENT. 

pointed  and  depressed,  take  refuge  in  "  liberal "  views  in 
doctrine  and  in  drink,  and  pour  out  their  infidelities  and 
atheisms  as  largely  as  a  sleepy  public  will  allow ;  when,  at 
length,  having  lived  up  to  their  principles  for  a  year  or  two, 
or  more,  their  death  and  their  nom  deplume,  with  "real 
name,"  are,  for  the  first  time,  made  public;  the  "report" 
being,  "Died"  of  mania  a  potu,  delirium  tremeus,  drowned, 
run  over  by  the  cars  at  midnight ;  "  died  "  by  his  own  hand, 
by  the  visitation  of  God !  Such  are  not  a  few  of  the  men 
who,  through  the  daily,  the  weekly,  the  monthly,  and  the 
quarterly,  enter  our  parlors,  and  talk  to  our  wives,  and  sons, 
and  daughters,  in  gingerly  infidelities,  in  gilded  whoredoms. 
Men  of  a  true  humanity  and  a  true  progress !  look  to  it  that 
you  write  to  counteract  these  poisons,  and  write  as  splendidly  ; 
look  to  it  further,  that  your  centre-tables  be  cleared  of  all 
this  worse  than  trash,  and  assert  and  practise  your  right  of  a 
proper  supervision  of  what  your  families  are  to  read.  There 
is  "death  in  the  pot,"  literary  and  moral,  as,  in  olden  time, 
there  was  in  the  culinary,  —  moral  death  in  many  a  fascinating 
novel,  and  high-sounding  magazine,  and  "popular"  weekly. 
Some  reason  was  there  in  the  declaration  made  to  us  lately 
by  one  of  our  sternest,  most  useful,  and  aged  divines,  "I  al- 
low no  newspaper  to  be  read  in  my  family."  Another,  of  a 
different  profession,  who  was  second  to  none  in  position  and 
professional  ability,  since  passed  away  with  years  and  honors, 
said,  "There  is  but  one  daily  paper  in  New  York  that  I  con- 
sider fit  to  enter  a  family  of  daughters."  Therefore,  while 
one  part  of  the  community  should  watch  the  reading  of  their 
families  with  a  jealous  care,  let  those  who  can  write  well, 
pungently,  and  powerfully,  feel  it  their  duty  to  do  what  in 
them  lies  to  insure  that  the  literary  pabulum  of  the  people 
shall  be  uupoisoned,  —  shall  be  prepared  with  materials  that 
are  morally  pure,  safe,  and  nutritious,  — that  the  reading  for 
the  masses  be  sound,  truthful,  and  divine. 


BULL  DOGS.  393 


BULL  DOGS. 

WHEN  quite  a  child,  a  beautiful  big  dog  came  to  our  fa- 
ther's house,  no  one  knew  whose  or  whence.  All  the  children 
were  wonderfully  taken  with  him ;  he  was  fed,  and  caressed, 
and  played  with,  from  morning  till  night,  and  we  all  thought 
we  had  gotten  a  valuable  prize.  Before  long,  however,  we 
discovered  a  failing,  a  serious  drawback ;  there  was  no  reli- 
ability in  his  mood ;  for,  in  the  very  midst  of  our  gambols 
with  him,  he  would  sometimes  turn  round  and  snap  at  us  so 
savagely,  that  we  began  to  avoid  him.  Strangers  would  often 
exclaim,  "  What  a  beautiful  dog  you  have  ! "  But  we  could 
not  join  in  any  commendation  of  him.  We  let  visitors  praise 
him,  and  we  let  him  alone. 

Later  in  life  we  have  found  bull  dogs  everywhere,  in  every 
party,  in  every  sect,  in  every  profession,  and  in  very  many 
families. 

A  young  man  is  a  suitor ;  his  dress  and  address  mark  the 
gentleman.  He  is  educated,  travelled,  handsome.  His  de- 
meanor is  unexceptionable,  and  he  wins  the  hand  and  trusting 
heart,  and  makes  them  his  own.  But,  on  a  nearer  view, 
after  marriage,  unexpected  developments  are  made,  startling 
principles  are  enunciated, — the  principles  of  the  roue,  of  the 
gambler,  of  the  infidel.  With  such  a  one  a  pure  heart  can 
never  assimilate,  and  retires  more  and  more  within  itself; 
while  the  other,  left  more  and  more  to  itself,  grows  cold  and 
fretful ;  becomes,  daily,  more  soured ;  and  complaints,  and 
fault-findings,  and  growls  are  the  order  of  the  day ;  —  that  is 
a  Domestic  Bull  Dog. 

A  strange  physician  arrives.  He  is  polished  in  his  man- 
ners, plausible  in  his  theories,  and  confident  in  himself. 
Courteous  in  deportment,  agreeable  and  gossiping  in  conver- 
sation, he  wins  his  way  among  the  people ;  they  forsake  the 
man  to  whom  they  have  been  bound  by  ties  of  citizenship  and 
near  neighborhood  for  a  dozen  or  twenty  years,  and  the  new- 
comer is  all  and  all.  But  time  develops  character.  With  a 
remorseless  maw,  he  snaps  at  his  new  patrons'  purses,  bites 
out,  in  merciless  mouthfuls,  the  substance  of  his  patients, 


394  BULL  DOGS. 

who,  just  about  that  time,  find  out  that  he  is  not  as  good  as 
their  "old  doctor."  But  the  new  one  got  their  purse,  and 
they  got  their  experience  by  paying  the  —  Medical  Bull  Dog. 

A  minister  comes  among  us.  We  never  heard  of  him  be- 
fore ;  but  he  "walks  into  our  affections  "  unresistingly,  for 
we  are  carried  away  with  his  eloquence.  As  lavishly  as  corn 
grains  to  a  brood  of  chickens,  does  he  scatter  around  him  the 
bright  jewels  of  thought ;  we  feel  as  if  we  could  sit  and  listen 
to  him  always,  and  he  settles  among  us.  But  no  sooner  fixed, 
than  some  idea  is  proposed  which  we  do  not  like  altogether ; 
but,  thinking  that  we  must  have  heard  amiss,  it  is  passed 
over,  and,  for  "a  spell,"  all  moves  on  smoothly  as  before; 
then  another  new  idea  is  thrown  out,  rather  more  rousing 
than  before,  — in  fact,  it  is  disquieting ;  and,  with  the  charity 
which  many  good  qualities  engendered,  wre  think,  perhaps, 
he  did  not  mean  what  he  said  ;  had  failed  to  express  himself 
clearly ;  but,  before  the  irritation  has  subsided,  another  shot 
is  cast,  and  another,  and  another,  with  shortening  intervals, 
until  not  a  sermon  is  heard,  without  some  expression  is  made 
more  or  less  startling,  enough  to  make  us  feel  that  it  is 
nothing  short  of  a  desecration  of  the  day,  and  the  place,  and 
the  occasion.  These  things  go  on  until,  by  degrees,  the  new- 
comer is  "  shied  "  from  by  the  more  reflecting ;  they  cease  to 
wait  on  his  ministrations,  say  nothing  in  his  praise,  and  let 
him  alone.  Next,  the  newspapers  take  him  up.  They  handle 
him  gingerly  at  first ;  but  his  sentiments  and  his  conduct  be- 
coming more  and  more  "liberal,"  in  an  ungracious  sense,  he 
is,  after  much  long-suffering,  in  consequence  of  his  undenied 
mental  power  and  other  bright  qualities,  reluctantly  "  read 
out,"  and  he  settles  down  among  the  heterodox  and  the  infi- 
del, where  he  belonged  from  the  first,  and,  thenceforward,  is 
regarded  as  a  Clerical  Bull  Dog. 

A  daily,  a  weekly,  a  monthly,  a  quarterly  publication  is 
left  at  our  doors.  A  close  criticism  discovers  nothing  ob- 
jectionable, and  much  to  commend.  It  comes,  too,  at  a  low 
price,  and  we  conclude  to  give  it  the  support  of  our  patronage 
and  influence.  It  continues  good,  and,  by  degrees,  we  begin 
to  feel  a  personal  interest  in  its  prosperity ;  and,  about  this 
time,  the  rise  in  price  to  that  of  others  of  its  class  is  an- 
nounced ;  we  wince  and  bear  it.  Later  still,  there  is  a 


BULL  DOGS.  395 

latitudinarianism  in  its  editorials  not  wholly  agreeable  ;  these 
gradually  grow  more  and  more  decided,  to  become  in  time  as 
dogmatical,  as  impertinent,  as  levelling  as  any  of  its  class,  and 
we  tolerate  when  we  do  not  admire;  and,  as  we  can't  better 
ourselves,  we  submit,  to  be  aroused  to  indignation,  even,  at 
sentiments  uttered  every  now  and  then,  jpolitical,  social,  re- 
ligious, which  almost  determine  us  not  to  take  that  paper 
another  day.  But  we  must  have  a  paper ;  it  is  no  worse  than 
the  others,  while  in  some  things  it  is  better ;  and  we  take  it 
still,  forgetting  that  an  arrow  poisoned  with  a  false  doctrine 
in  politics,  in  domesticities,  in  religion,  especially  when 
barbed  with  ridicule,  never  fails  to  leave  in  young  minds  a 
venom,  which  remains,  and  rankles,  and  corrupts,  to  the  utter 
ruin,  sometimes,  of  the  whole  moral  character.  Beware, 
then,  of  Editorial  Bull  Dogs. 

The  dog  which  came  to  our  father's  house  had,  no  doubt, 
been  kicked  out  of  somebody  else's ;  we,  at  length,  did  the 
same  thing,  and  he  slunk  off  to  find  another  home.  He  was 
a  peripatetic  bull  dog ;  his  prototype  is  found  in  those  who 
go  about  the  country  lecturing,  professionally,  on  this,  that, 
or  the  other  specified  subject ;  but,  to  cut  the  whole  matter 
short,  we  will  state  it,  as  our  observation,  that,  with  very  few 
exceptions,  we  come  away  from  a  public  lecture  with  feelings 
varying  from  dissatisfaction  to  disgust,  and,  now  and  then, 
with  horror ;  for,  no  later  than  last  night,  having,  for  the 
reason  above  given,  almost  wholly  ceased  from  attending 
public  lectures,  we  heard  a  man  discoursing,  professedly,  on 
"Fun."  We  love  a  laugh  ;  for  we  know  it  to  be  a  better  pill 
for  the  dispersion  of  blues,  inanity,  and  the  like,  than  any  of 
our  compounding,  hence  we  go  willingly  where  a  whole-souled 
risibility  may  be  expected.  The  lecturer  pleased  us  hugely 
at  first.  He  hit  off  gaming,  and  profanity,  and  drunkenness, 
to  a  T,  closing,  however,  with  the  laudification  of  Punch, 
and  Thackeray,  and  Dickens,  making  quotations  from  these 
men  as  being  superior  to  any  sentiment  from  any  pulpit  in 
Christendom  ;  and,  with  a  twitting  of  parsons  and  people,  who 
were  so  pious  that  a  smile  was  considered  a  profanity,  he 
ceased  with  the  growl  of  a  Bull  Dog  Lecturer.  The  lesson 
of  this  article  is  —  Beware  of  new  men,  of  strangers.  Take 


396  LIVING  AGES. 

time  to  "  try  the  spirits."  Of  social  bull  dogs,  domestic  bull 
dogs,  and  bull  dogs  medical,  as  also  those  of  the  press,  the 
rostrum,  and  the  pulpit,  beware  ! 


LIVING  AGES. 

IT  has  been  the  aim  of  our  writings  to  inculcate  the  idea 
that  man  should  be  in  his  fullest  mental  prime  at  sixty,  and 
ought  to  live  in  good  health  a  hundred  years,  and  so  would 
we,  as  a  general  rule,  if  we  lived  wisely,  temperately,  every 
day.  We  expect  to  be  living  a  hundred  years  to  come,  not 
bodily,  but  in  influences.  This  book  will  influence  its  steady 
readers,  from  month  to  month,  to  live  more  or  less  according 
to  its  teachings,  giving  them  increased  vigor  of  body  and  of 
mind,  to  be  perpetuated  in  their  offspring,  and  they  again  to 
theirs.  This  is  what  we  call  "  living  for  ages." 

One  of  the  best  specimens  of  a  whole  man  in  New  York 
said  of  our  writings,  "  They  ought  to  be  read,  they  will  be 
read  when  you  are  gone."  This  single  expression,  in  the 
busiest  hum  of  high  noon  in  New  York,  threw  over  our  most 
time  sunny  heart  one  of  the  most  sudden  and  sombre  clouds 
in  our  remembrance  ;  not,  indeed,  a  cloud  of  sorrow  or  of  dis- 
appointment, but  of  responsibility.  It  came  upon  us  like 
the  weight  of  au  avalanche,  starting  the  inquiry,  Have  I 
written  truthfully?  invitingly?  Have  I,  in  anything,  hoisted 
a  false  light,  which  some  foundering  brother  long  afterwards 
looking  trustfully  to,  shall  mislead  and  make  a  wreck  of? 

Then  came  the  resolve,  We  will  write  more  carefully  here- 
after, especially  as  our  readers  are  more  than  fivefold  what 
they  ever  were  before.  The  next  moment  our  thoughts  ran 
away  off  among  our  brother  editors,  and  then  all  the  writers 
and  clergymen.  Do  they  feel  as  fully  as  they  ought,  that 
every  line  they  write,  every  sentiment  they  utter,  are  pebbles 
thrown  on  the  bosom  of  the  great  sea  of  human  life,  which 
shall  make  waves  of  influences  that,  for  all  times,  shall 
aid  in  propelling  some  human  brother  to  glad  successes,  or 
to  bitter  disappointments,  to  final  happiness,  or  to  ultimate 
despair?  Let  us  resolve  then,  one  and  all,  as  we  must  "live 


BEAUTIFUL   OLD  AQE.  397 

for  ages,"  for  good  or  for  ill,  that  we  will  live  to  elevate  and 
bless  humanity,  by  being  truthful  in  every  line  we  write,  in 
every  sentiment  we  utter. 


BEAUTIFUL   OLD   AGE. 

"  WHAT  a  lovely  old  man  he  was,  so  simple  and  modest." 
Such  is  a  traveller's  testimony  of  a  sage  in  his  ninetieth  year ; 
a  man  "  whose  greatness  has  not  destroyed  his  nobleness  of 
heart,  but  nobleness  of  heart  has  rendered  still  greater." 
The  author  of  "  Cosmos  "  stands  out  among  a  million  of  men 
in  his  intelligence,  in  his  age,  in  his  striking  physiognomy ; 
the  blue  bright  eye,  the  "massive  forehead,  deep,  broad,  over- 
hanging ;  "  and  the  heart,  too,  stands  out,  in  even  higher  relief, 
than  all  the  others,  and  the  stranger  apostrophizes,  "  What  a 
lovely  old  man  ! " 

Religion  makes  a  man  lovely  in  his  age ;  true  and  deep 
science  makes  a  man  lovely  in  age ;  and  so  does  a  real  great 
heart :  but  the  imperfections  of  our  nature  altogether  fail  to 
do  it,  too  often,  when  there  is  not  sound  bodily  health  under- 
lying the  whole.  It  is  good  health  which  moulds  the  features 
in  smiles,  which  warms  up  the  affections,  and  mellows  the 
heart  with  human  sympathies  ;  on  the  other  hand,  illness  cor- 
rugates the  brow,  freezes  up  the  fountains  of  loviuguess,  and 
despondency  and  fretfulness  reign  supreme,  unless  counter- 
acted by  high  Christian  principles. 

With  so  much  depending  on  bodily  health  when  gray  hairs 
come  upon  us,  who  shall  not  say  that,  next  to  securing  a 
Bible  piety,  it  should  be  the  aim  of  all  who  are  truly  wise  to 
do  what  is  possible  by  study,  by  observation  and  steady 
self-denial,  to  maintain  all  the  time  a  high  state  of  bodily 
health. 

To  grow  kindly  as  age  comes  on,  is  to  grow  in  likeness  to, 
and  a  fit  preparation  for,  companionship  with  angels  in  the 
mansions  where  all  is  love  ;  but  to  grow  cross,  and  peevish,  and 
complaining,  by  reason  of  the  irritating  influences  which  a 
diseased  and  suffering  body  exercises  over  the  heart,  making  it 
a  leafless  tree,  sapless  and  dry,  when  it  should  have  boughs 


398  OBJECT  OF  EATING. 

bending  almost  to  the  earth  with  the  delicious  fruits  of  a 
loving  nature,  —  how  wide  the  contrast !  Old  age  with  religion 
and  health,  and  old  age  with  neither,  let  Cornaro  and  Voltaire 
be  the  representative  men ;  and  let  every  man  determine  with- 
in the  hour  which  portrait  he  will  set  to,  in  what  mould  he 
shall  be  cast,  forgetting  not  that  that  mould  is  in  process  of 
formation  now. 


OBJECT  OF  EATING. 

TAKING  food  into  the  body  is  called  eating,  passing  it  from 
the  body  is  called  defecation. 

Three  fourths  of  all  our  ailments  occur,  or  are  kept  in  con- 
tinuance, by  preventing  the  daily  food  which  is  eaten  from 
passing  out  of  the  body,  after  its  substance  has  been  extracted 
by  the  living  machinery  for  the  purpose  of  renovation  and 
growth.  A  healthy  laboring  man  will  eat  daily  two  pounds 
of  solid  food,  of  meat,  bread,  vegetables,  and  fruit ;  these  two 
pounds,  if  brought  together  in  one  heap,  would  till  to  over- 
flowing the  largest  sized  dinner-plate,  and  yet  there  are 
myriads  of  grown-up  men  and  women  to  whom  the  idea  has 
never  occurred,  that  if  this  mass  is  retained  in  the  body,  day 
by  day,  inevitable  harm  must  accrue.  If  a  man  eats  two 
pounds  daily,  near  two  pounds  daily  must  in  some  way  or 
other  pass  from  his  body,  or  disease  and  premature  death  is  a 
speedy  and  inevitable  result. 

The  object  of  passing  food  through  the  body  is  threefold  in 
youth ;  in  maturity,  two  :  for  growth,  sustenance,  and  repair 
in  the  one,  in  the  latter  for  support  and  repair  only ;  that  is, 
nutrition ;  and  the  process  by  which  the  system  separates  the 
nutriment  from  the  food  is  called  digestion ;  the  distribution 
of  this  digested  material  to  the  different  parts  of  the  body 
where  needed,  for  the  purpose  of  being  incorporated  into 
bone,  flesh,  nerve,  and  tendon,  is  termed  assimilation. 


HEART  DISEASE.  399 


HEART  DISEASE. 

WHEN  an  individual  is  reported  to  have  died  of  a  "  Disease 
of  the  Heart,"  we  are  in  the  habit  of  regarding  it  as  an  inevi- 
table event,  as  something  which  could  not  have  been  foreseen 
or  prevented  ;  and  it  is  too  much  the  habit,  when  persons  sud- 
denly fall  down  dead,  to  report  the  "  heart"  as  the  cause  ;  this 
silences  all  inquiry  and  investigation,  and  saves  the  trouble 
and  inconvenience  of  a  repulsive  "post  mortem."  A  truer 
report  would  have  a  tendency  to  save  many  lives.  It  is 
through  a  report  of  "  disease  of  the  heart "  that  many  an 
opium  eater  is  let  off  into  the  grave,  which  covers  at  once  his 
folly  and  his  crime ;  the  brandy  drinker,  too,  quietly  slides 
round  the  corner  thus,  and  is  heard  of  no  more ;  in  short,  this 
report  of  "  disease  of  the  heart "  is  the  mantle  of  charity, 
which  the  politic  coroner  and  the  sympathetic  physician  throw 
around  the  grave  of  "genteel  people." 

At  a  late  scientific  congress  at  Strasburg,  it  was  reported, 
that  of  sixty-six  persons  who  had  suddenl}7  died,  an  immediate 
and  faithful  post  mortem  showed  that  only  two  persons  had 
any  heart  affection  whatever  :  one  sudden  death  only,  in  thirty- 
three,  from  disease  of  the  heart.  Nine  out  of  the  sixty-six 
died  of  apoplexy,  one  out  of  every  seven ;  while  forty-six,  more 
than  two  out  of  three,  died  of  lung  affections,  half  of  them  of 
"congestion  of  the  lungs,"  that  is,  the  lungs  were  so  full  of 
blood  they  could  not  work  ;  there  was  not  room  for  air  enough 
to  get  in  to  support  life. 

It  is,  then,  of  considerable  practical  interest  to  know  some 
of  the  common  every-day  causes  of  this  "  congestion  of  the 
lungs,"  a  disease  which,  the  figures  above  being  true,  kills 
three  times  as  many  persons,  at  short  warning,  as  apoplexy 
and  heart  disease  together.  Cold  feet,  tight  shoes,  tight 
clothing,  costive  bowels  ;  sitting  still,  until  chilled  through 
and  through  after  having  been  warmed  up  by  labor  or  a  long 
or  hasty  walk ;  going  too  suddenly  from  a  close,  heated  room, 
as  a  lounger,  or  listener,  or  speaker,  while  the  body  is  weak- 
ened by  continued  application,  or  abstinence,  or  heated  by 
the  effort  of  a  long  address ;  these  are  the  fruitful,  the  very 


400  SLEEPING   TOGETHER. 

fruitful  causes  of  sudden  death  in  the  form  of  "  congestion  of 
the  lungs ;  "  but  which,  being  falsely  reported  as  "disease  of 
the  heart,"  and  regarded  as  an  inevitable  event,  throws  people 
off  their  guard,  instead  of  pointing  them  plainly  to  the  true 
causes,  all  of  which  are  avoidable,  and  very  easily  so,  as  a 
general  rule,  when  the  mind  has  been  once  intelligently  drawn 
to  the  subject. 


SLEEPING  TOGETHER. 

IF  a  man  were  to  see  a  quarter  of  an  inch  of  worm  put  in 
his  cup  of  coffee,  he  could  not  drink  it,  because  he  knows  that 
the  whole  cup  would  be  impregnated.  If  a  very  small  amount 
of  some  virulent  poison  be  introduced  into  a  glass  of  water, 
the  drinking  of  it  might  not  produce  instant  death,  but  that 
would  not  prove  that  it  was  not  hurtful,  only  that  there  was 
not  enough  of  it  to  cause  a  destructive  result  immediately. 

We  sicken  at  the  thought  of  taking  the  breath  of  another 
the  moment  it  leaves  the  mouth,  but  that  breath  mingles  with 
the  air  about  the  bed  in  which  two  persons  lay ;  and  it  is  re- 
breathed,  but  not  the  less  offensive  is  it  in  reality,  on  account 
of  the  dilution,  except  that  it  is  not  taken  in  its  concentrated 
form ;  but  each  breath  makes  it  more  concentrated.  One 
sleeper  corrupts  the  atmosphere  of  the  room  by  his  own 
breathing,  but  when  two  persons  are  breathing  at  the  same 
time,  twelve  or  fourteen  times  in  each  minute,  in  each  minute 
extracting  all  the  nutriment  from  a  gallon  of  air,  the  deteriora- 
tion must  be  rapid  indeed,  especially  in  a  small  and  close 
room.  A  bird  cannot  live  without  a  large  supply  of  pure  air. 
A  canary  bird,  hung  up  in  a  curtained  bedstead  where  two 
persons  slept,  died  before  the  morning. 

Many  infants  are  found  dead  in  bed,  and  it  is  attributed  to 
having  been  overlaid  by  the  parents ;  but  the  idea  that  any 
person  could  lay  still  for  a  moment  on  a  baby,  or  anything  else 
of  the  same  size,  is  absurd.  Death  was  caused  by  the  want  of 
pure  air. 

Besides,  emanations  aerial  and  more  or  less  solid,  are  thrown 
out  from  every  person,  thrown  out  by  the  processes  of  nature, 
because  no  longer  fit  for  life  purposes,  because  they  are  dead 


SURFEIT.  401 

and  corrupt ;  but  if  breathed  into  another  living  body,  it  is 
just  as  abhorrent  as  if  we  took  into  our  mouths  the  matter  of 
a  sore  or  any  other  excretion. 

The  most  destructive  typhoid  and  putrid  fevers  are  known 
to  arise  directly  from  a  number  of  persons  living  in  the  same 
small  room. 

Those  who  can  afford  it,  should  therefore  arrange  to  have 
each  member  of  the  family  sleep  in  a  separate  bed.  If  per- 
sons must  sleep  in  the  same  bed,  they  should  be  about  the 
same  age,  and  in  good  health.  If  the  health  be  much  unequal, 
both  will  suffer,  but  the  healthier  one  the  most,  the  invalid 
suffering  for  want  of  an  entirely  pure  air. 

So  many  cases  are  mentioned  in  standard  medical  works, 
where  healthy,  robust  infants  and  larger  children  have  dwin- 
dled away,  and  died  in  a  few  months  from  sleeping  with  grand- 
parents, or  other  old  persons,  that  it  is  useless  to  cite  special 
instances  in  proof. 

It  would  be  a  constitutional  and  moral  good  for  married 
persons  to  sleep  in  adjoining  rooms,  as  a  general  habit.  It 
would  be  a  certain  means  of  physical  invigoration,  and  of 
advantages  in  other  directions,  which  will  readily  occur  to  the 
reflective  reader.  Kings  and  queens,  and  the  highest  person- 
ages of  courts,  have  separate  apartments.  It  is  the  bodily  em- 
anations, collecting  and  concentrating  under  the  same  cover, 
which  are  most  destructive  to  health,  more  destructive  than 
the  simple  contamination  of  an  atmosphere  breathed  in  com- 
mon. 


SURFEIT. 

SURFEIT  in  man  is  called  founder  in  a  horse,  and  is  over- 
eating, eating  more  than  the  stomach  can  possibly  convert  into 
healthful  blood.  Wise  men,  and  careful  men,  will  sometimes 
inadvertently  eat  too  much,  known  by  a  feeling  of  fulness,  of 
unrest,  of  a  discomfort  which  pervades  the  whole  man.  Under 
such  circumstances,  we  want  to  do  something  for  relief;  some 
eat  a  pickle,  others  swallow  a  little  vinegar,  a  large  number 
drink  brandy.  We  have  swallowed  too  much  ;  the  system  is 
oppressed  and  nature  rebels  ;  instinct  comes  to  the  rescue  and 


402  CHILDREN'S  EATING. 

takes  away  all  appetite,  to  prevent  our  adding  to  the  burden 
by  a  morsel  or  a  drop.  The  very  safest,  surest,  and  least 
hurtful  remedy,  is  to  walk  briskly  in  the  open  air,  rain  or  shine, 
sun,  hail,  or  hurricane,  until  there  is  a  very  slight  moisture  on 
the  skin ;  then  regulate  the  gait,  so  as  to  keep  the  perspiration 
at  that  point,  until  entire  relief  is  afforded,  indicated  by  a  gen- 
$ral  abatement  of  the  discomfort ;  but  as  a  violence  has  been 
offered  to  the  stomach,  and  it  has  been  wearied  with  the  ex- 
tra burden  imposed  upon  it,  the  next  regular  meal  should  be 
omitted  altogether.  Such  a  course  will  prevent  many  a  sick 
hour,  many  a  cramp,  colic,  many  a  fatal  diarrhrea. 


CHILDREN'S  EATING. 

WHEN  a  child  is  observed  to  have  little  or  no  appetite  for 
breakfast,  sickness  of  some  kind  is  impending.  If  in  addition 
to  this  indifference  for  food  in  the  morning,  there  is  a  uniform 
desire  for  a  hearty  supper  at  the  close  of  the  day,  a  dyspepsia 
for  life  will  be  founded,  which  will  embitter  many  an  other- 
wise happy  hour ;  or  some  other  form  of  chronic  disease  will 
result,  which  medical  skill,  for  many  years,  will  often  fail  to 
eradicate. 

This  want  of  appetite  in  the  morning,  and  this  over-appetite 
late  in  the  day,  is  the  creator  of  disease  in  multitudes  of  grown 
persons  who  have  reached  maturity  in  good  health,  but  whose 
change  of  position,  of  business,  or  of  associations,  has  gradu- 
ally led  to  the  perversion  of  nature's  laws. 

Young  children  naturally,  in  common  with  the  animal  crea- 
tion, are  greedy  for  breakfast,  after  the  long  abstinence  of 
twelve  hours  ;  this  is  the  natural  arrangement,  and  it  is  wise. 

As  persons  of  any  intelligence  at  all  cannot  but  know  that 
eating  heartily  late  in  the  day  is  destructive  of  health,  we 
need  not  stop  here  to  prove  it ;  but  by  pointing  out  an  easy 
remedy,  we  will,  if  it  is  attended  to  by  every  reader,  arrest 
more  disease,  and  save  more  life,  than  can  easily  be  computed. 
The  importance  of  attending  to  what  we  shall  say  is  such,  that 
we  entreat  all  parents  who  have  any  true  wisdom  and  affec- 
tion, who  have  an  abiding  desire  for  the  future  happiness  of 


WELL  DONE.  403 

their  offspring,  to  give  it  their  mature  consideration,  their 
steady  and  prompt  attention. 

Allow  nothing  to  be  eaten  between  meals,  not  an  atom  of 
anything,  and  let  the  time  of  eating  be  fixed,  and  regular  to  a 
minute  almost,  for  nature  loves  regularity. 

On  the  first  evening  allow  the  child  just  half  of  his  common 
supper.  In  three  or  four  days  diminish  the  last  allowance 
one  half  more.  For  another  week  allow  nothing  at  all  but 
one  or  two  ordinary  slices  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  and  a  cup 
of  hot  water  and  milk,  with  sugar  in  it,  called  cambric  tea, 
from  its  similarity  in  color  to  that  fabric.  Meanwhile  the  ap- 
petite for  breakfast  will  gradually  increase,  until  it  becomes  a 
hearty  meal,  and  all  the  exercise  of  the  day  will  go  to  its 
thorough  digestion,  and  perfect  adaptation  to  the  nutrition  of 
the  whole  system. 

It  is  contrary  to  physiological  law,  to  nature  and  to  com- 
mon sense,  to  eat  an  atom  of  anything  later  than  an  hour  after 
sundown,  and  alike  contrary  to  all  these  is  it,  to  make  the 
last  meal  of  the  day  the  heartiest  one,  as  in  the  manner  of 
five  o'clock  dinners. 


WELL    DONE. 

To  do  anything  well,  there  should  be  a  sound  mind  in  a 
healthy  body.  There  have  been  men  who  were  perhaps  never 
well,  never  for  an  hour  enjoyed  good  health,  and  yet  they 
lived  to  purpose,  for  their  deeds  are  this  day  exerting  a  hap- 
pifying  influence  on  mankind.  William  the  Conqueror  was 
a  wheezing  asthmatic  all  his  days.  Bishop  Hall  was  a  martyr 
to  pain  as  ceaseless  as  it  was  severe.  Baxter  had  an  infirmity 
of  constitution,  and,  from  early  youth  to  the  grave,  labored 
under  bodily  disease  and  wearing  pains.  Calvin  scarcely 
knew,  in  twenty  years,  what  it  was  to  have  a  well  day.  No 
doubt  the  sufferings  of  these  men  aided  in  moulding  their  char- 
acters to  a  form  which  the  age  required.  The  most  we  can 
say  of  these  cases  is,  that  their  diseased  condition  was  over- 
ruled, and  good  was  brought  out  of  it.  What  greater  good 
might  have  resulted  had  they  been  men  of  stalwart  coustitu- 


404  LIQUOR  DRINKING. 

tions,  we  may  never  know,  but  certain  it  is,  that  when  we  are 
well,  thought  is  a  pleasure,  and  labor  is  a  pleasure,  but  when 
sick,  both  are  a  burden,  and  every  thought,  and  every  a<tt,  is 
the  result  of  an  effort.  We  shall  never  do  anything  perfectly 
until  we  get  to  heaven ;  but  there,  pain,  and  sickness,  and 
disease  can  never  enter.  And  if  health  is  needed  to  enable  us 
to  do  our  duty  well  in  a  perfect  state,  much  more  is  it  needed 
to  help  us  perform  our  parts  well  on  earth.  But  whether  sick 
or  well,  let  us  do  what  we  may  towards  fulfilling  our  duty, 
and  that  is  all  that  will  be  required  of  us.  We  can  readily  see 
how  personal  afflictions  may  humble,  and  subdue,  and  sanc- 
tify, and  thus  redound  to  the  good  of  the  individual ;  but  for 
all  that,  the  great  cause  of  humanity  must  suffer  by  it.  The 
Almighty  may  permit  disease,  as  he  permits  sin,  and  we  can- 
not believe  that  he  has  any  agency  in  sending  either ;  we  bring 
both  on  ourselves ;  but  for  all  that,  both  may  be  overruled  to 
our  good  and  his  glory. 


LIQUOR  DRINKING. 

IF  men  will  drink  alcohol  in  some  shape,  the  least  injurious 
time  for  it  is  during  a  regular  meal,  or  within  a  few  minutes 
after,  for  then  the  strength  of  the  stimulus  is  expended  on  the 
digestive  organs,  and  enables  them  to  perform  their  work 
more  thoroughly ;  hence  an  amount  of  brandy  which  would 
make  one  tipsy  on  an  empty  stomach,  would  have  no  such 
effect  if  taken  during  dinner.  But  the  amount  taken,  to  be 
in  any  way  beneficial,  must  be  in  proportion  to  the  fat,  butter, 
or  oils  used  at  the  same  meals  ;  in  this  case,  it  aids  the  system 
to  appropriate  the  fat  to  itself;  in  other  words,  brandy  taken 
with  fatty  food,  tends  to  fatten  quickly,  but  it  does  not  give 
strength ;  fat  people  are  not  strong.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
a  conceded  fact  in  physiology,  that  alcohol  in  every  shape  im- 
pedes the  digestion  of  the  albuminous  portion  of  our  food ; 
that  is,  brandy  makes  no  flesh,  makes  no  muscle,  gives  no 
strength.  The  prize-fighter  does  not  want  fat ;  one  main 
object  in  his  training  is  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  replace  it  with 
substantial  muscle,  with  flesh ;  hence,  when  in  training,  he 


DANGERS   OF  SPRING.  405 

never  touches  liquor.  The  advocates  of  brandy  triumphantly 
point  at  a  ruddy-faced  drinker,  with  his  apparently  well-de- 
veloped muscle  and  well-filled  skin ;  but  fat  is  a  disease,  is  a 
puff;  he  has  no  agility  of  limb,  no  activity  of  body ;  there  is 
no  power  in  his  arm,  no  courage  in  his  heart ;  for  he  knows, 
and  we  do  too,  that  a  lean  stripling,  or  a  ploughboy  of  twenty, 
who  was  never  drunk  in  his  life,  "  could  whip  him  all  to  pieces 
in  five  minutes."  Away,  then,  with  all  the  nonsense  about 
brandy  strengthening  anybody ;  it  weakens  the  head,  it  cow- 
ers the  heart,  and  wastes  away  the  whole  man. 


DANGERS  OF  SPRING. 

ABOUT  one  fifth  more  persons  die  in  New  York  City  in 
May  than  in  November.  After  being  pent  up  in  the  winter,  it 
might  be  supposed  that  the  ability  to  go  out  and  exercise  in 
the  luscious  air  of  spring-time  would  be  productive  of  in- 
creased vigor  and  health  of  body ;  but  this  is  simply  not  the 
case,  as  evidenced  by  the  ably-prepared  and  valuable  reports 
of  our  City  Inspectors.  This  difference  of  mortality  between 
the  last  month  of  spring  and  the  last  month  of  fall,  arises 
from  causes  which  are  under  the  control  of  the  people,  or  be- 
yond ;  two  of  each  will  be  mentioned.  The  natural  causes 
are,  —  1.  The  increased  dampness  of  the  atmosphere,  proven 
by  the  fact  that  doors  which  shut  easily  in  winter  do  not  do  so 
in  summer.  2.  Nature  takes  away  the  appetite  for  meals, 
for  heat-giving  food,  in  order  to  prepare  the  body  for  the  in- 
creased temperature  of  summer.  But  two  errors  in  practice, 
at  this  time,  interfere  with  wise  nature's  arrangements,  and 
induce  many,  and  painful,  and  dangerous  diseases.  First, 
the  amount  of  clothing  is  diminished  too  soon.  Second,  the 
conveniences  of  fire  in  our  dwellings  are  removed  too  early. 
All  persons,  especially  children,  old  people,  and  those  in 
delicate  health,  should  not  remove  the  thickest  woollen  flannel 
of  midwinter  until  some  time  in  May,  and  then  it  should  be 
merely  a  change  to  a  little  thinner  material. 

Furnaces  should  not  be  removed,  nor  fireplaces  and  grates 
cleaned  for  the  summer,  until  the  first  of  June ;  for  a  brisk 


406  PURE  FOOD. 

fire  in  the  grate  is  sometimes  very  comfortable  in  the  last 
week  in  May  ;  that  may  be  a  rare  occurrence  ;  but,  as  it  does 
sometimes  take  place,  it  is  better  to  be  prepared  for  it,  than 
to  sit  shivering  for  half  a  day,  with  the  risk  to  ourselves  and 
children  of  some  violent  attack  of  spring  disease.  By  inat- 
tention to  these  things,  four  causes  are  in  operation  to  chill 
the  body,  and  induce  colds  and  fevers. 

First.  The  dampness  of  the  atmosphere  in  May. 

Second.  The  striking  falling  off  in  appetite  for  meats  and 
other  "heating"  food. 

Third.  The  premature  diminution  of  clothing. 

Fourth.  The  too  early  removal  of  the  conveniences  of  fire. 

And,  when  the  very  changing  condition  of  the  weather  of 
May  is  taken  into  account,  it  is  no  wonder  that,  under  the 
influence  of  so  many  causes  of  diminution  of  the  temperature 
of  the  body,  many  fall  victims  to  disease. 

In  November,  the  healthiest  month  in  the  year,  we  have 
put  on  our  warmest  clothing,  we  have  kindled  our  daily  fires, 
we  have  found  a  keen  relish  for  substantial  food,  while  the 
dampness  of  the  atmosphere  has  been  removed  by  the  conden- 
sation of  increasing  cold.  The  wise  will  remember  these 
things  for  a  lifetime,  and  teach  them  to  their  children. 


PUKE  FOOD. 

IT  is  no  economy  to  use  inferior  food.  It  is  a  saving  of 
money,  and  time,  and  health,  to  give  a  higher  price  for  what 
we  eat,  if  it  be  fresh  and  perfect,  than  to  obtain  it  for  less,  on 
account  of  its  being  wilted,  or  old,  or  partially  decayed. 

Some  people  prefer  to  make  their  meat  tender  by  keeping ; 
which  means,  that  decomposition  is  taking  place  ;  in  plainer 
phrase,  it  is  rotting.  Such  meats  require  less  chewing,  and 
may  appear  very  tender ;  but  it  is  a  physiological  fact,  that 
they  are  not  digested  as  easily,  or  as  quickly,  as  solid  fresh 
meat. 

When  a  vegetable  begins  to  wilt,  it  is  no  longer  that  vege- 
table, because  a  change  of  particles  has  taken  place,  and,  in 
such  proportion,  it  is  unnatural,  —  it  is  dead,  —  and  to  eat  it 
tends  to  death. 


PURE  FOOD.  407 

One  of  the  most  horrible  forms  of  disease  is  caused  by  eat- 
ing sausages  which  have  been  kept  a  long  time ;  more  com- 
mon in  Germany  than  elsewhere.  Scarcely  anything  saddens 
us  so  much,  in  passing  through  some  of  the  by-streets  and 
the  more  eastern  avenues,  as  the  sight  of  the  long-kept  meats 
and  shrivelled  vegetables  which  are  sold  to  the  unfortunate 
poor  at  the  Dutch  corner  groceries. 

But  the  poverty-stricken  are  not  the  only  sufferers ;  the 
richest  men  come  in  for  their  share,  for  themselves  and  for 
their  families,  in  proportion  as  the  mistresses  of  their  splendid 
mansions  are  incompetent  or  inattentive  to  those  household 
duties,  the  proper  performance  or  neglect  of  which  makes  all 
the  difference  between  a  true  wife  and  a  contemptible  doll. 

With  all  the  high-sounding  advantages  of  high-sounding 
"  Young  Ladies'  Boarding  Schools,"  and  "Institutes,"  and  all 
that ;  with  all  the  twaddle  about  learning  French  and  German, 
and  music  and  aesthetics,  how  many  of  these  paint-like  girls 
are  any  more  fit  to  take  charge  of  a  man's  household  than  to 
navigate  a  ship,  or  calculate  a  parallax?  Does  one  in  a  mil- 
lion of  them  know  the  philosophy  and  uses  of  that  now  indis  • 
pensable  article  of  household  furniture,  a  refrigerator?  If 
taken  to  Bartlett's,  on  Broadway,  how  many  of  them  can  tell 
why  he  places  the  ice  on  the  top  of  his  Polar  refrigerator,  and, 
by  so  placing,  gives  the  greatest  cold  to  the  articles  below? 
why  it  is  there  is  no  wood  on  the  inside  to  become  saturated 
with  dampness  and  the  fumes  of  butter,  and  lard,  and  milk, 
and  meats?  why  it  is  that  a  particular  kind  of  metal,  of  a  par- 
ticular shape,  by  the  aid  of  ten  pounds  of  ice  a  day,  will 
give  a  large  family  all  the  ice-water  needed,  and  will  keep  the 
bottom,  and  sides,  and  area  of  the  refrigerator  dry,  by  attract- 
ing all  the  dampness  to  a  particular  spot,  and  by  an  interior 
arrangement  gives  no  dark  corners  for  dirt,  but  makes  the 
whole  as  light  as  day  ;  and  thus  combining  dryness,  coolness, 
and  cleanliness,  every  article  is  kept  fresh  and  perfect  for  any 
reasonable  time  ?  The  study  of  an  article  of  a  practical  nature 
of  this  kind  will  give  a  "young  lady,"  about  to  be  married,  a 
better  idea  of  the  philosophy  of  things  of  this  sort,  than  she 
has  learned  from  all  the  books  skimmed  over,  or  learned  by 
rote  or  mere  memory,  through  her  whole  "course"  of  study, 
and  would  save  her  husband  more  money,  than,  without  that 


408  WEAKLY  YOUTHS. 

knowledge,  she  is  worth ;  for  the  woman  who  does  not  know 
how,  and  does  not  make  it  her  business,  to  take  care  of  what 
her  husband  brings  into  the  house,  is  not  worth  a  button,  even 
if  she  could  smatter  a  dozen  languages,  dance  every  indecent 
polka  ever  devised,  and  play  all  the  tunes  in  the  music-book. 
The  study  of  milk,  its  natures  qualities,  and  uses,  might 
well  be  made  a  branch  of  education  in  every  school  for  girls. 
Studied  aright,  it  is  a  fruitful  and  very  extensive  field  of  most 
interesting  investigation ;  i.  e.  —  The  nature  of  swill  milk,  and 
that  of  the  pure  article.  How  long  milk  remains  pure.  What 
part  of  any  vessel  of  milk  is  richest,  and  what  part  the  most 
inferior,  and  why.  Why  it  is  that  warming  milk,  or  freezing 
it,  decomposes  it  and  changes  its  nature.  How  to  keep  it  in 
its  pure  state  for  a  long  time  together.  The  knowledge  of 
these  things,  on  the  part  of  our  wives,  would  save  the  money, 
and  promote  the  happiness  and  health,  of  every  family  in  the 
land. 


WEAKLY  YOUTHS. 

WITHIN  one  week,  three  persons  have  complained  that 
their  lives  have  been  made  lives  of  suffering,  by  the  ignorance 
of  parents,  thus :  They  grew  up  rapidly,  almost  as  tall 
at  sixteen  as  at  mature  age.  The  rapidity  of  their  growth 
was  attended  with  great  debility  ;  while  the  parents,  judging 
of  the  ability  to  work  by  the  size,  required  more  of  them  than 
they  were  able  to  perform,  and  a  strain  was  imposed  upon 
their  constitutions  which  made  them  a  wreck  after ;  not,  in- 
deed, destroying  life,  but  leaving  the  body  a  shell,  and  all  its 
functions  so  impaired,  as  to  their  capabilities,  that  none  of 
their  work  was  well  performed,  resulting  in  disease  of  the 
whole  system,  making  life  a  torture ;  and,  in  one  case  we 
know  of,  there  is  a  never-failing  reprehension  of  parental 
memory. 

Persons  who  are  healthy  and  hearty  themselves,  do  not 
know  how  to  sympathize  with  a  rapidly  growing  child,  and 
its  complaints  of  weariness  are  unheeded,  blamed,  or 
scolded  at.  To  all  parents,  then,  especially  to  fanners  and 
mechanics,  we  give  the  advice,  when  a  child  has  grown  up 


BOTTLED   WRATH.  409 

rapidly,  impose  but  little  labor,  and  that  never  violent,  nor 
long-protracted ;  it  should  be  light,  short,  steady,  not  by  tits 
and  starts ;  never  drive,  always  encourage,  and,  when  they 
go  to  bed  at  a  regular,  early  hour,  let  them  have  all  the  sleep 
they  will  take ;  never  allow  them  to  be  waked  up,  let  nature 
do  that,  and  she  will  do  it  regularly,  and  in  due  time.  We 
know  a  man  who  almost  daily  execrates  his  father's  memory, 
although  he  left  him  a  handsome  fortune,  and  a  lady  who,  at 
seventy-five,  thinks  hard  of  her  mother's  severity  and  want 
of  sympathy  in  this  regard. 


BOTTLED  WKATH. 

BOTTLED  wrath,  like  pent  up  steam,  is  all  the  better  and 
safer  for  being  " let  off."  If  a  little  boy  "stumps  his  toe,"  he 
grits  his  teeth,  hisses  out  a  malediction,  gives  the  offending 
stone  a  savage  kick,  and  straightway  feels  better.  A  groan  is 
the  healthful  vent,  the  anodyne  of  pain ;  and  tears  relieve  and 
save  the  almost  breaking  heart.  It  is  he  who  cannot  cry,  who 
dies  with  sorrow.  There  is  neither  sense  nor  safety  in  un- 
complaining suffering,  as  to  the  repression  of  its  instinctive 
exhibition.  There  is  no  pain  where  there  is  no  nerve.  The 
more  nerve,  the  greater  the  susceptibility  to  suffering.  The 
nervous  influence,  as  it  is  called,  is  a  fluid,  just  as  blood  is  a 
fluid ;  and  as  the  blood  flowing  along  the  blood  vessels  gives 
life,  so  the  nervous  influence  flowing  along  the  nerve  channels 
gives  sensation.  If  the  blood  has  no  outlet,  we  become  dis- 
eased in  a  few  hours.  If  a  wound  is  inflicted,  it  will  get  well, 
ordinarily,  the  sooner  if  blood  flows  or  is  taken.  So  -in  the 
infliction  of  pain,  it  is  relieved  instantly  if  the  nervous  influ- 
ence has  vent.  That  vent,  the  scapement,  the  water-way,  is 
in  every  movement  of  a  muscle,  in  every  wink  of  the  eye,  in 
every  crook  of  the  finger,  in  every  thought  we  think ;  for  we 
can  no  more  think,  or  move,  or  feel,  without  the  expenditure 
of  nervous  influence,  than  would  a  telegraphic  record  be  made 
without  the  expenditure  of  electricity,  or  the  locomotive  would 
move  an  inch  without  the  consumption  of  an  amount  of  steam. 

If,  then,  pain  is  inflicted  as  to  mind  or  body,  the  sooner  we 


410  BOTTLED   WRATH. 

can  give  an  outlet  to  the  nervous  influence,  the  more  imme- 
diate will  be  the  relief;  therefore  nature,  in  her  philosophy, 
has  implanted  an  instinct  which  complains  on  the  very  instant 
the  harm  is  done ;  hence  the  groan,  the  cry,  the  shriek,  and 
these  before  second  thoughts  have  time  to  come  and  whisper 
it  is  not  dignified  to  cry,  or  shriek,  or  groan ;  and  many  a  one 
has  exclaimed  in  mortification,  at  the  supposed  weakness  of  so 
doing,  "  What  a  fool,  to  have  made  such  a  racket !  "  So  it  does 
seem  that  at  almost  every  turn  of  life,  we  attempt  to  thwart 
wise  nature,  and  hedge  her  up  by  bald  reason,  in  her  attempt 
to  soothe  and  save.  To  put  all  this  in  plainer  phrase,  the 
louder  you  groan  in  sickness  and  suffering,  the  sooner  will  you 
get  well.  Hence,  to  a  certain  extent,  when  a  person  complains 
a  great  deal,  we  have  fallen  into  the  habit  of  saying,  O  !  there's 
not  much  the  matter  with  him  ;  he  is  more  scared  than  hurt. 
We  have  insensibly  fallen  into  the  habit  of  drawing  such  con- 
clusions, because  we  have  noticed  that  persons  who  complain 
a  great  deal,  complain  a  long  time ;  they  don't  die,  and  very 
often  get  well  in  a  few  days. 

And  here  let  us  make  an  earnest  appeal  for  infancy  and 
early  childhood.  When  a  child  is  hurt,  never  hush  it  up  ;  it 
is  an  inexcusable  barbarity ;  it  is  fighting  against  nature ;  it 
is  repressing  her  instincts  :  and  for  the  same  reason,  if  physical 
punishment  is  inflicted  on  a  child,  never  repress  its  crying ;  it- 
is  a  perfect  brutality  ;  cases  are  on  record  where  children  have 
been  thrown  into  convulsions  in  their  efforts  to  silence ;  and 
very  little  less  hurtful  is  it  to  hire  them  to  silence.  A  thou- 
sandfold better  is  it  to  soothe  by  kindly  words  and  acts,  and 
divert  the  mind  by  telling  stories,  or  by  explaining  pictures,  or 
by  providing  with  new  toys.  We  have  many  a  time  in  our 
professional  experience  as  to  sick  children,  found  more  bene- 
fit to  be  derived  from  a  beautiful  or  interesting  toy,  than  from 
a  dose  of  physic.  The  greatest  humanity  a  mother  can  exhib- 
it in  respect  to  her  sick  child  is  to  divert  it,  DIVERT  IT,  DI- 
VERT IT,  in  all  the  pleasing  ways  possible,  as  we  ourselves, 
who  are  larger  children,  feel  sometimes  really  sick,  when  a 
cheerful-faced  and  much-loved  friend  has  come  in,  and  before 
we  knew  it,  we  had  forgotten  that  .anything  was  the  matter 
with  us. 

We  have  sadly  wandered  from  what  we  intended  when  the 


COOLINGS.  411 

heading  of  this  article  was  written;  and  not  to  detain  the 
reader  longer,  we  will  sum  up  as  concisely  as  possible,  that  if 
any  man  has  a  fretful  wife,  one  who  does  not  fail  to  greet  him, 
on  his  return  from  the  business  of  the  day,  by  pouring  out  her 
complaints  with  overwhelming  volubility,  who  never  sits 
down  to  a  family  meal  without  some  whine  or  doggish  growl, 
let  him  adopt  the  following  plan  for  letting  out  the  "  bottled 
wrath  "  before  he  comes  in  gunshot  of  home. 

Let  one  of  the  servants  be  very  little,  very  lazy,  very  fat, 
and  very  stupid,  in  fact,  pretty  much  of  a  fool.  Such  a  girl 
can  no  more  be  excited  into  a  passion  than  she  could  be 
stimulated  to  hurt  herself  by  hard  work,  and  she  will  bear  a 
great  deal  of  verbal  pummelling.  You  can't  make  her  saucy. 
She  is  too  lazy  to  give  "  warning,"  and  too  wise  to  get  mad, 
for  there  is  no  fool  but  has  some  redeeming  quality ;  she  will 
stand  the  fire  of  verbal  abuse  by  the  hour,  for  she  knows 
words  don't  hurt.  So  while  the  boy  kicks  the  stone,  let  the 
wife  blaze  away  at  the  lump  of  dough,  and  all  the  ammuni- 
tion being  expended  before  you  get  home,  the  steam  being 
exhausted,  "reaction"  takes  place,  and  the  hyena  of  high 
noon  will  be  a  lamb  at  sundown,  at  the  tea-table,  at  the  parlor 
fire,  and  at  bed-time. 


COOLINGS. 

To  make  water  almost  ice  cold,  keep  it  in  an  earthen 
pitcher,  unglazed,  wrapped  around  with  several  folds  of  coarse 
linen  or  cotton  cloth,  kept  wet  all  the  time.  The  evaporation 
from  the  cloth  abstracts  the  heat  from  within,  and  leaves  the 
water  as  cold  as  it  ought  to  be  drank  in  summer,  consistent 
with  safety  and  health. 

Cooling  rooms :  the  least  troublesome  plan  is  to  hoist  the 
windows  and  open  the  doors  at  daylight,  and  at  eight  or  nine 
o'clock  close  them,  especially  the  external  windows  and 
shutters,  if  there  be  any,  except  to  admit  barely  necessary 
light. 

Churches  may  be  kept  delightfully  cool  in  the  same  way, 
and  thus  greatly  add  to  the  comfort  of  public  worship,  leav- 


412  COOLINGS. 

ing  the  windows  open,  but  the  lattice  shutters  closed  on 
the  north  side  of  the  house,  which  will  secure  a  thorough 
ventilation. 

Still  greater  coolness  may  be  produced  by  having  a  large, 
heavy  cotton  or  linen  sheet  hung  near  each  open  window  or 
door,  and  kept  constantly  wet ;  the  evaporation  produces  a  vac- 
uum, and  a  continual  draught  of  air  is  the  result.  In  India  and 
other  eastern  countries,  common  matting  is  used ;  long  grass 
plaited  answers  a  good  purpose.  In  Germany,  a  broad  vessel 
or  pan  is  kept  in  the  room,  nearly  filled  with  water,  —  the  pan, 
not  the  room, — the  surface  of  the  water  being  covered  with 
green  leaves. 

To  have  delightfully  hard  butter  in  summer,  without  ice, 
the  plan  recommended  by  that  excellent  and  useful  publication, 
the  Scientific  American,  is  a  good  one.  Put  a  trivet,  or  any 
open  flat  thing  with  legs,  in  a  saucer;  put  on  this  trivet  the 
plate  of  butter,  and  fill  the  saucer  with  water ;  turn  a  common 
flower-pot  upside  down  over  the  butter,  so  that  its  edge  shall 
be  within  the  saucer,  and  under  the  water.  Plug  the  hole  of 
the  flower-pot  with  a  cork,  then  drench  the  flower-pot  with 
water,  set  it  in  a  cool  place  until  morning ;  or  if  done  at 
breakfast,  the  butter  will  be  very  hard  by  supper  time.  How 
many  of  our  city  boarding-school  girls,  who  have  been  learn- 
ing philosophy,  astronomy,  syntax,  and  prosody  for  years,  can, 
of  their  own  selves,  write  us  an  explanation. 

To  keep  the  body  cool  in  summer,  it  is  best  to  eat  no  meat, 
or  flesh,  or  fish,  at  least  not  oftener  than  once  a  day,  and  that 
in  the  cool  of  the  morning ;  making  a  breakfast  dessert  of 
berries  of  some  kind.  Dinner,  light  soup  with  bread ;  then 
vegetables,  rice,  samp,  corn,  cracked  wheat ;  dinner  dessert 
of  fruits  and  berries,  in  their  natural  state,  fresh,  ripe,  and 
perfect.  Touch  nothing  later  than  dinner  ;  taking  nothing  at 
all  at  supper  but  a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  and  a 
single  cup  of  some  hot  drink,  or,  in  place  of  these,  a  saucer  of 
ripe  berries,  without  sugar,  milk,  cjream,  or  anything  else,  not 
even  a  glass  of  water,  or  any  other  liquid,  for  an  hour  after. 

To  keep  the  head  cool,  especially  of  those  who  live  by  their 
wits,  such  as  lawyers,  doctors,  editors,  authors,  and  other 
gentlemen  of  industry,  it  is  best  to  rise  early  enough  to  be 
dressed  and  ready  for  study  as  soon  as  it  is  sufficiently  light 


FANATICISM.  413 

to  use  the  eyes  easily  without  artificial  aid,  having  retired  the 
evening  before  early  enough  to  have  allowed  full  seven  hours 
for  sound  sleep  ;  then  study  for  about  two  hours  ;  next,  make 
a  breakfast  of  a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  an  egg,  and  a 
cup  of  hot  drink,  nothing  more  ;  then  resume  study  until  ten, 
not  to  be  renewed  until  next  morning ;  allowing  no  interrup- 
tion whatever,  until  the  time  for  study  ceases,  except  to  have 
the  breakfast  brought  in.  The  reason  of  this  is,  the  brain  is 
recuperated  by  sleep  ;  hence  its  energies  are  greatest,  freshest, 
purest,  in  all  men,  without  exception,  immediately  after  a 
night's  sleep,  and  every  moment  of  thought  diminishes  the 
amount  of  brain  power,  as  certainly  as  an  open  spigot 
diminishes  the  amount  of  liquid  within.  Nature  may  be 
thwarted,  and  her  plans  wrested  from  her,  and  habit  or 
stimulation  may  make  it  more  agreeable  to  some  to  do  their 
studying  at  night,  but  it  is  a  perversion  of  the  natural  order 
of  things,  and  such  persons  will  be  either  prematurely  dis- 
abled, or  their  writings  will  be  contrary  to  the  right  and  the 
true.  As  the  brain  is  more  vigorous  in  the  morning,  so  is  the 
body,  and  vigor  of  both  must  give  vigor  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression, that  is,  if  the  head  has  anything  inside. 


FANATICISM. 

FANATICISM  is  seeing  the  seeming  as  if  it  were  real,  and 
acting  accordingly  ;  hence  the  fanatical  merit  our  pity,  instead 
of  receiving  our  sneers,  and  our  severer  reprobation.  In  a 
radical  sense,  a  fanatic  is  one  who  treats  a  phantom,  a  fancy, 
an  apparition,  a  figment,  as  if  it  were  a  fact,  and  giving  a 
wider  scope,  it  is  the  exaggeration  of  a  fact,  or  principle,  or 
practice.  It  is  on  this  latter  that  the  success  of  many  of  the 
greatest  enterprises  of  all  ages  have  succeeded.  A  kind  of 
fanaticism  seems  essential  to  any  great  success.  It  is  a 
quality  belonging  to  the  ardent,  to  the  highly  imaginative,  to 
the  hopeful.  But  it  may  be  well  questioned,  whether  the 
world  would  not  have  made  a  steadier,  a  safer,  and  a  farther 
progress,  without  the  aid  of  this  mental  characteristic,  with 
the  advantage  of  having  prevented  the  wasting  of  energies 


414  FANATICISM. 

in  a  wrong  direction,  the  blasting  of  highly  cherished  but 
unauthorized  hopes,  the  utter  ruin  and  wreck  of  many  a  fine 
intellect,  the  breaking  of  many  a  warm  and  noble  heart. 

In  truth,  fanaticism  is  a  mental  weakness  ;  it  arises  from  an 
unbalancing  of  the  faculties,  an  exaggeration  of  some,  a 
deficit  in  others.  Now  and  then  the  fanatical  succeed ;  but 
oftener,  or  at  least  more  happily  do  they  succeed,  who  have 
what  is  called  "  well-balanced  minds."  Such  do  not  ac- 
complish things  as  rapidly,  but  they  do  it  with  greater  cer- 
tainty, with  greater  durability,  and  with  far  less  waste  of 
power.  In  this  equable  adjustment  of  the  high  qualities,  the 
English  is  a  representative  nation,  while  we  find  the  type  of  the 
fanatical  in  the  Frenchman  :  the  American  is  between  the  two. 

As  far  as  health  and  disease  are  concerned,  we  have  instruc- 
tive examples  of  the  practical  failure  of  fanaticism  in  the  lives 
of  Priessuitz,  of  Shew,  of  Graham,  and  Alcott.  As  citizens, 
all  of  them,  as  far  as  we  know,  were  good  men,  honest,  well- 
meaning,  benevolent,  and  humane ;  but  when  we  look  for  the 
practical  good  effect  of  their  theories,  as  exhibited  in  their 
own  persons,  and  we  may  well  suppose  under  the  very  highest 
advantages  of  correct,  intelligent,  and  thorough  application, 
there  is  confessedly  a  sad  failure.  Dr.  Shew,  the  American 
champion  of  Hydropathy,  died  a  comparatively  young  man. 
Priessuitz  did  not  live  to  be  old.  Graham,  who  gave  name  to 
the  famous  "  Graham  bread,"  died  at  the  age  of  fifty,  and 
Alcott  only  completed  his  threescore  years ;  all  of  them 
frittered  away  their  lives  in  attempting  to  foist  their  crude 
notions  upon  public  acceptance,  with  loud  assurances  of  a 
serene  and  healthful  old  age.  They  exhibited  great  goodness 
of  heart  in  their  self-denials  and  their  severe  sacrifices  in 
attempting  to  prove  the  truth  of  their  vagaries ;  but  this  does 
not  sanctify  their  own  destruction,  and  the  destruction  of  mul- 
titudes of  weaker-minded  persons,  who  took  hold  of  their  half 
facts,  and  ran  them  into  the  ground,  to  their  own  undoing. 
Their  sincerity,  their  honest  belief  in  the  truth  of  their 
theories,  did  not  extend  their  own  lives  to  an  encouraging 
limit ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  reason  to  suppose 
they  shortened  them  by  their  ill-advised  experiments.  Alcott 
drank  no  water  for  a  whole  year,  and  lived  many  3rears  on 
fruits  and  vegetables,  never  tasting  meat,  or  milk,  or  butter, 


LONGEVITY  PROMOTED.  415 

or  yeasted  bread,  only  to  die  at  a  time  when  both  body  and 
mind  ought  to  have  been  in  their  highest  prime. 

Let  these  melancholy  results  learn  us,  who  still  live,  the 
true  wisdom  of  avoiding  extremes,  remembering  that  a  kind 
Providence  has  given  us  all  things  richly  to  enjoy,  only  enjoin- 
ing to  be  temperate  in  the  use  of  them,  and  in  this  is  enduring 
health,  an  effective  life,  a  serene  and  happy  old  age. 


LONGEVITY  PROMOTED). 

To  a  very  great  extent,  our  life  is  in  our  own  hands,  al- 
though it  is  the  prevailing  fashion  of  the  times  to  regard 
death,  especially  if  it  is  premature,  or  if  the  person  dying,  of 
any  age,  occupies  a  position  of  influence  and  usefulness,  as  a 
"  mysterious  dispensation  of  Providence,"  when,  in  reality, 
"  Providence  "  had  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  had  no  direct  agency 
in  the  matter ;  only  indirectly,  in  having  founded  the  laws  of 
our  being.  When  men  die  short  of  eighty  or  a  hundred 
years,  it  is  the  result  of  violated  law,  and  almost  always  on 
their  own  part. 

If  a  sedentary  man  eats  a  hearty  meal  late  in  the  day,  or  a 
laborious  man  does  the  same  thing  after  long  fasting  and  pro- 
tracted exertion,  ending  in  great  bodily  fatigue,  and  is  at- 
tacked in  the  night  with  cramps,  colic,  or  cholera  morbus,  or 
other  form  of  looseness  of  bowels,  ending  in  death  next  morn- 
ing, there  is  no  "  mystery  "  in  that.  The  man  is  his  own  de- 
stroyer, and  in  that  destruction  his  Maker  had  no  agency. 

A  man  in  the  prime  of  life  enters  a  crowrded  omnibus,  after 
a  long  or  rapid  walk,  which  has  induced  free  perspiration ; 
the  air  appears  alone  to  him  almost  suffocating,  and  with  an 
insanity  resulting  from  detached  scraps  of  knowledge  about 
the  advantage  of  pure  air,  he  opens  the  window,  and  the 
breeze  is  delicious ;  but  before  he  is  aware  of  it  he  finds  him- 
self chilled,  and  wakes  up  in  the  morning  with  acute  throat 
disease,  or  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  or  violent  fever;  or  the 
magazine  of  impending  consumption  has  been  fired,  and  he 
wilts,  and  wastes,  and  dies —  by  his  own  hand,  from  ignorance 
of  the  fact,  that  no  air  of  any  coach,  or  conveyance,  or 


416  LONGEVITY  PROMOTED. 

crowded  room,  is  a  thousandth  part  as  injurious  or  dangerous 
to  a  new  comer  as  the  purest  air  that  was  ever  breathed,  if  it 
comes  with  a  draught  upon  one  who  is  perspiring,  and  remains 
in  a  still  position. 

The  most  talented  and  useful  clergyman  in  the  land,  whose 
influence  is  widening  and  deepening  every  day  for  good,  carry- 
ing all  before  him  by  the  power  of  his  eloquence,  after  an 
unusual  effort,  in  which  the  heart,  as  well  as  brain  and  body, 
all  have  been  brought  into  an  exhausting  requisition,  all 
heated,  and  perspiring  and  debilitated,  feels  it  his  duty  to 
attend  some  urgent  call,  and  hastes  away  into  the  cold,  raw, 
damp  air,  the  bleak  wind  whistling  fiercely  by,  and  in  a  week, 
in  the  midst  of  his  usefulness,  he  is  laid  in  the  grave,  by 
peritoneal  (abdominal)  inflammation,  or  quinsy,  or  pleurisy  — 
his  own  destroyer,  for  he  acted  as  if  he  were  made  of  iron, 
instead  of  flesh  and  blood.  He  threw  his  life  away,  in  an  in- 
distinct impression,  that  as  he  was  doing  a  good  work,  a 
miracle  would  be  wrought  for  his  protection  ;  and  because  the 
laws  of  nature  were  allowed  to  take  their  usual  course,  it  is 
deemed  a  "  wonderful  and  mysterious  dispensation  of  Prov- 
idence," and  we  cry,  "His  ways  are  past  finding  out." 

A  woman  holds  on  her  lap  a  lovely  child.  It  was  born  per- 
fect, fair,  and  beautiful,  but  the  aristocratic  mother  has  not  the 
stamina  to  feed  it,  for  the  natural  fountain  is  short  of  a  full 
supply,  and  ale  and  beer,  and  the  universal  milk-punch,  are 
swilled  by  the  pint  and  quart  a  day,  to  "  make  milk."  But 
just  in  proportion  as  ^t  is  alcoholic,  it  is  innutritive ;  it  creates 
an  appearance  of  flesh,  and  strength,  and  thrift,  but  all  as  un- 
real and  transient  as  Jonah's  gourd,  and  the  child,  by  the  ex- 
citement thrown  to  the  head,  dies  of  water  on  the  brain ;  or  if, 
by  virtue  of  the  father's  more  robust  and  vigorous  constitution 
and  temperament,  infancy  and  youth  are  survived,  the  instinct 
for  excitement  planted  in  the  first  year  wakes  up  again  at 
maturity,  and  the  young  lady  wastes  her  intellect  in  the 
stimulus  of  novel  reading,  or  the  young  man  destroys  intellect 
and  body  too,  in  yielding  to  the  fires  of  liquor  and  of  license  ; 
and  suddenly  as  the  bank  deposit  of  a  spendthrift  heir  gives 
out,  so  suddenly  is  exhausted  the  vital  force  ;  and  he  dies  at  his 
toilet,  in  his  chair,  at  the  table,  or  on  the  street,  —  of  heart 
disease,  so  the  coroner's  jury  reports  ;  a  "  mysterious  dispensa- 


WHY  CHILDREN  DIE.  417 

tion  of  Providence  "  is  the  response  from  another  direction. 
The  true  verdict  is,  "  Died  by  a  mother's  folly,  committed 
twenty  years  agone  !  " 

Great  men  are  gentle.  God  is  Love.  His  way  of  removing 
his  children  from  their  lower  home  is  in  tenderness,  for  he 
has  appointed  that,  in  the  habitual  exercise  of  moderation  all 
the  parts  of  the  human  machine  shall  wear  out  equally,  one 
not  faster  than  another;  one  no  sooner  than  another;  all 
gradually  cease,  all  fail  at  the  same  instant;  one  worn-out 
function  does  not  cease  its  operation,  while  another,  in  its  full 
vigor,  strives  to  go  on  without  it;  hence  the  universally 
observed  fact  is,  that  the  very  old  die  gently,  without  a  strug- 
gle, and  scarce  a  pang ;  die  as  an  infant  falls  to  sleep  amid 
its  mother's  lullaby ;  "  like  as  a  shock  of  corn  cometh  in  his 
season." 

"  So  fades  a  summer  cloud  away; 

So  sinks  the  gale  when  storms  are  o'er ; 
So  gently  shuts  the  eye  of  day ; 
So  dies  a  wave  along  the  shore." 


WHY  CHILDREN  DIE. 

"I  HAVE  seen  persons  who  gather  for  the  parlor  their 
choicest  flowers,  just  as  they  begin  to  open  into  full  bloom 
and  fragrance,  lest  some  passer  by  should  tear  them  from  the 
bush  and  destroy  them.  Does  not  God  sometimes  gather  into 
heaven  young  and  innocent  children  for  the  same  reason  ?  — 
lest  some  rude  hand  may  despoil  them  of  their  beauty." 

Some  weak  brother  has  been  trying  his  hand  to  see  what  a 
beautifully  sounding  sentence  he  could  make  out  of  a  whopper. 
The  reason  why  children  die  is  because  they  are  not  taken 
care  of.  From  the  day  of  birth  they  are  stuffed  with  food, 
choked  with  physic,  sloshed  with  water,  suffocated  in  hot 
rooms,  steamed  in  bed-clothes.  So  much  for  in-doors.  When 
permitted  to  breathe  a  breath  of  pure  air  once  a  week  in  sum- 
mer, and  once  or  twice  during  the  colder  months,  only  the 
nose  is  permitted  to  peer  into  daylight.  A  little  later  they 
are  sent  out  with  no  clothing  at  all,  as  to  the  parts  of  the 
body  which  most  need  protection.  Bare  legs,  bare  arms,  bare 


418  CONSTITUTIONS   CREATED. 

necks ;  girted  middles,  with  an  inverted  umbrella  to  collect 
the  air,  and  chill  the  other  parts  of  the  body.  A  stout,  strong 
man  goes  out  on  a  cold  day  with  gloves  and  overcoats, 
woollen  stockings  and  thick,  doubled-soled  boots,  with  cork 
between  and  rubbers  over.  The  same  day,  a  child  of  three 
years  old,  an  infant  in  flesh  and  blood,  and  bone  and  con- 
stitution, goes  out  with  soles  as  thin  as  paper,  cotton  socks, 
legs  uncovered  to  the  knees,  arms  naked,  necks  bare ;  an  ex- 
posure which  would  disable  the  nurse,  kill  the  mother  outright 
in  a  fortnight,  and  make  the  father  an  invalid  for  weeks.  And 
why  ?  To  harden  them  to  a  mode  of  dress  which  they  never 
are  expected  to  practice.  To  accustom  them  to  exposure, 
which  a  dozen  years  later  would  be  considered  downright 
foolery.  To  rear  children  thus  for  the  slaughter-pen,  and 
then  lay  it  on  the  Lord,  is  too  bad.  We  don't  think  that  the 
Almighty  has  any  hand  in  it.  And  to  draw  comfort  from  the 
presumption  that  he  has  any  agency  in  the  death  of  a  child,  in 
the  manner  of  the  quoted  article,  is  a  presumption  and  a 
profanation. 


CONSTITUTIONS  CREATED. 

To  build  up  a  good  constitution,  we  must  take  good  care  of 
what  we  have,  and  add  to  it,  by  pretty  hard  work  and  mod- 
erate thought,  until  the  age  of  forty-five ;  then,  there  should 
be  less  work  and  more  thought. 

Bodily  labor  consolidates  the  constitution  up  to  forty-five  ; 
then  mental  labor  preserves  it,  keeps  it  good  to  the  verge  of 
fourscore  years,  if  the  bodily  activities  are  very  moderate. 
As  witness  Humboldt,  who  was  a  great  traveller  in  early  life ; 
but  from  fifty  to  ninety  a  great  student.  Many  similar  in- 
stances will  occur  to  intelligent  minds.  The  general  idea  is 
of  great  practical  importance.  Work  hard  until  forty-five ; 
think  hard  after,  and  all  the  while  be  "temperate  in  all 
things."  This  is  to  live  long. 


KILL  OR  CURE.  419 


KILL  OR  CURE. 

"KiLL  or  cure,  neck  or  nothing,"  are  favorite  saws  with 
some  people,  and  with  other  some,  a  little  more  daft,  there  is 
a  still  more  dearly-hugged  comforter,  "  so  simple,"  that  it 
can't  do  any  harm,  if  it  does  no  good ;  and  armed  with  that 
philosophy,  multitudes  daily  swallow  poisons  to  an  incredible 
amount,  with  the  result  of  losing  the  last  remnant  of  health, 
if  not  life  itself.  They  start  out  on  the  assumed  fact,  that 
what  is  "simple"  can't  injure.  If  this  is  applied  to  men,  we 
think  it  rather  unfortunate,  for  there  are  "  simple  "  men  and 
women  in  myriads,  who  are  doing  hourly  more  harm  to  them- 
selves, their  friends,  their  neighbors,  their  children,  than  any 
arithmetic  can  compute ;  so  simple  in  eating,  in  dress,  in 
opinion,  in  conversation,  in  judgment,  in  conduct,  that  often 
the  expression  escapes  themselves  in  reviewing  the  past, 
"  What  a  fool  I  am  ! " 

But  this  is  a  moral  simplicity.  The  simplicity  of  remedial 
agents  is  the  subject  more  immediately  in  hand.  The  people 
who  are  so  marvellously  fond  of  what  they  call  "simple" 
things,  start  out  on  the  unwarrantable  supposition,  that  what 
is  "  simple  "  is  synonymous  with  the  fact  that  they  are 
"familiar"  with  it.  Whiskey,  for  example,  is  a  familiar,  and 
we  might  say,  a  very  familiar  article  with  some  people ; 
verily  it  is  with  them  an  old  acquaintance,  a  bosom  friend,  an 
inseparable  companion  ;  their  testimony  is  uniformly  that  it  is 
good  for  the  "  insides  "  and  good  for  the  out ;  that  it  not  only 
never  did  them  any  harm,  but  always  did  them  good ;  they 
"always  felt  better  after  taking  it." 

We  are  very  well  acquainted  with  tobacco.  Look  at  the 
Virginian,  for  example  :  he  talks  of  tobacco,  he  dreams  about 
it,  he  eats  it,  he  smells  of  it ;  the  very  dollar  in  his  pocket  is 
redolent  with  its  hateful  fumes ;  it  is  wedged  in  under  his 
finger  nails,  it  spots  his  shirt  bosom,  it  stains  his  vest,  its  juice 
is  scattered  over  his  pants,  it  cakes  at  the  corners  of  his  mouth, 
and  the  long  streaks  of  colored  saliva  dribble  from  his  lip,  and 
stripe  his  cheeks.  As  he  uses  it  more,  the  necessity  for  its 
use  is  greater,  until  finally  he  goes  to  sleep  with  a  lump  of  it 


420  KILL  OR  CURE. 

in  his  mouth.  Next  he  begins  to  dry  up,  his  flesh  shrinks 
away,  his  face  is  gaunt,  his  body  slab-like,  his  legs  spindles, 
his  gait  is  tottering  and  unsteady,  and  head  and  fingers  and 
arms  shake  like  the  palsied  or  the  agued.  Next  comes  the 
wasting  of  the  life  powers ;  digestion  ceases,  appetite  fails, 
the  nervous  energies  are  exhausted,  and  dulness,  and  stupor, 
and  the  sleep  of  death  come  on. 

Coffee  and  tea  are  very  "simple,"  very  familiar  things,  and 
have  been  used  for  a  lifetime  by  multitudes  without  any 
noticeably  injurious  effects  which  could  be  fairly  and  conclu- 
sively attributed  to  them ;  but  "simple"  as  they  are,  their  in- 
judicious use  has  made  many  a  one  miserably  nervous  and 
dyspeptic  for  life.  "  Simple  "  would  it  seem  to  rub  a  little 
candle  grease  on  a  trifling  pimple,  and  yet  death  followed 
from  the  poisonous  corrosion  of  the  brass  candlestick. 

Then  again,  what  may  be  "simple"  and  safe  for  one,  may 
not  be  simple  and  safe  for  another.  The  tired  donkey  found 
his  oppressive  load  of  salt  lightened,  and  himself  greatly 
refreshed,  by  swimming  a  swollen  stream ;  but  his  brother 
donkey,  loaded  with  a  huge  sack  of  wool,  was  delighted  at  the 
instant  relief  afforded  to  him  by  the  same  means,  but  it  was  a 
transient  and  deceitful  remedy,  for  no  sooner  did  he  begin  to 
emerge  from  the  stream,  than  the  increased  weight  of  wool 
and  water  crushed  him  hopelessly. 

A  newspaper  writer,  as  green  as  the  grass  he  treads  upon, 
recommends  what  he  considers  a  very  "  simple  "  remedy  —  ice. 
Hear  him :  — 

"Attacked  with  pneumonia,  salivated,  broken  down  in  con- 
stitution, subject  to  hemorrhages  from  the  lungs,  digestion 
totally  deranged,  and  rheumatic  neuralgia,  he  tried  in  vain 
the  remedies  prescribed  by  American  physicians,  the  effects 
of  foreign  travel,  the  most  rigid  diet,  and  the  most  careful 
and  systematic  habits  of  life.  The  most  learned  physicians  of 
London,  Paris,  Genoa,  Milan,  Florence,  Pisa,  and  Rome  could 
do  no  good." 

In  this  condition  he  began  "  the  use  of  ice,  first  melted  in 
water,  and  then  applied  it  in  the  solid  cake  to  the  person." 
At  first  he  "  took  a  sponge  bath  in  a  bowl  of  water,  in  which 
was  dissolved  a  piece  of  ice  the  size  of  a  walnut ;  from  day  to 
day  larger  lumps  were  used,  and  applied  directly  to  his  body, 


KILL  OR  CURE.  421 

until  finally  he  dissolved  five  or  six  pounds  of  ice  upon  his 
person  every  morning." 

In  a  time  not  stated,  the  following  changes  occurred  :  — 

"He  gained  sixty-five  pounds  of  flesh,  was  restored  not  only 
to  perfect  health  but  to  a  state  of  vigorous  energy,  physical 
strength,  vital  power,  un wasting  glow  of  feeling,  and  an 
ability  to  endure  any  amount  of  fatigue  and  exposure  with 
apparent  impunity.  His  description  of  his  present  condition 
is  ravishing.  Unbroken  sleep,  perfect  control  of  his  nervous 
system,  mind  always  serene  and  cheerful,  muscles  firm  and 
hard,  no  consciousness  of  the  existence  of  his  internal  organs, 
ability  to  do  with  half  the  sleep  he  formerly  required,  appetite 
always  good,  digestion  perfect,  no  taste  whatever  for  un- 
healthy food  ;  in  short,  a  supernatural  state  of  mind  and  body, 
in  which  "  every  moment  of  his  waking  existence  seems  to 
be  consciousness  of  physical,  intellectual,  moral,  and  social 
happiness." 

With  the  wisdom  of  his  brother  named  above,  he  declares 
that  to  numerous  pale,  lean,  sallow,  dyspeptic,  tobacco-using, 
excess-indulging  authors,  teachers,  editors,  clergj'men,  &c., 
the  same  remedy  will  bring  unwonted  power  of  mind  and 
body,  constant  cheerfulness,  a  power  of  moral  control,  "a 
blessed  clearness  of  thought,"  absence  of  all  nervousness ;  in 
fine,  an  ability  to  "  walk  farther,  stand  up  longer,  work  harder, 
and  do  everything  better  than  he  could  do  it  before."  "  Ex- 
istence will  grow  brighter,  and  the  flame  of  life  will  burn  with 
more  calmness,  serenity,  glow,  and  splendor  than  you  ever 
dreamed  of." 

He  attributes  these  wonderful  transformations  to  the  action 
of  "  certain  chemical  properties  and  the  electrical  heat  which 
the  ice  contains,"  which  explanation  of  the  modus  operandi  of 
the  matter  is  as  philosophical  and  as  lucid  as  could  be  given 
by  an  —  ignoramus. 

We  would  not  advise  the  application  of  solid  ice  to  old  peo- 
ple or  infants,  or  to  any  person  of  a  frail  constitution,  without 
consulting  a  physician,  for  it  would  with  great  certainty  hurry 
many  to  their  graves.  To  have  made  the  communication 
practically  valuable,  the  writer  should  have  stated  the  time  it 
required  to  give  him  an  increase  of  sixty-five  pounds  in 
weight ;  what  he  did  in  addition  to  the  ice  applications  ;  what 


422  SUMMER   SOUBS. 

he  did  to  place  him  in  the  deplorable  condition  described,  and 
what  bad  practices  he  abandoned.  Meanwhile,  let  the  reader 
remember  that  applications  or  remedies  which  benefit  one  man 
may  be  reasonably  expected  to  benefit  another  one,  in  propor- 
tion as  the  conditions  of  the  two  are  alike,  not  merely  in  effect, 
but  as  to  cause.  No  wise  man  would  experiment  on  his  own 
body  and  health  and  life  on  the  loose  statements  of  anonymous 
newspaper  writers. 

After  all,  when  a  reasonable  allowance  has  been  made  for 
the  evident  exaggerations  of  the  writer,  there  is  not  much  that 
is  unusual  or  remarkable  in  the  changes.  We  have  never 
known  a  man  to  gain  sixty-five  pounds  in  weight  on  ice,  in  a 
short  time ;  but  there  are  a  good  many  who  have  "  in  the 
course  of  time  "  gained  that  much  on  vulgar  beer.  Salivated 
people  have  before  now  got  well,  by  letting  themselves  alone  ; 
dyspeptic  and  lean  folks,  by  simply  ceasing  to  be  pigs ;  and 
many  a  "bilious"  man,  as  yellow  as  a  pumpkin,  has  become 
as  "hearty  as  a  buck,"  by  being  simply  compelled  to  go  to 
work  and  make  an  honest  living,  which,  by  the  way,  is  more 
health  promoting  than  the  icebergs  of  a  thousand  poles.  The 
trial  will  demonstrate  this  to  almost  any  reader. 


SUMMER  SOURS. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL  research  has  fully  established  the  fact  that 
acids  promote  the  separation  of  the  bile  from  the  blood,  which 
is  then  passed  from  the  system,  thus  preventing  fevers,  the 
prevailing  diseases  of  summer.  All  fevers  are  w  bilious  ;"  that 
is,  the  bile  is  in  the  blood.  Whatever  is  antagonistic  of 
fever,  is  cooling.  It  is  a  common  saying  that  fruits  are 
"  cooling,"  and  also  berries  of  every  description ;  it  is  because 
the  acidity  which  they  contain  aids  in  separating  the  bile  from 
the  blood ;  that  is,  aids  in  purifying  the  blood.  Hence  the 
great  yearning  for  greens  and  lettuce,  and  salads  in  the  early 
spring,  these  being  eaten  with  vinegar ;  hence,  also,  the  taste 
for  something  sour,  for  lemonades,  on  an  attack  of  fever. 

But,  this  being  the  case,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  we  nullify  the 
good  effects  of  fruits  and  berries,  in  proportion  as  we  eat  them 


LIGHTNING   STROKE.  423 

with  sugar,  or  even  sweet  milk,  or  cream,  If  we  eat  them  in 
their  natural  state,  fresh,  ripe,  perfect,  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  eat  too  many,  to  eat  enough  to  hurt  us,  especially  if  we 
eat  them  alone,  not  taking  any  liquid  with  them  whatever. 
Hence,  also,  is  buttermilk,  or  even  common  sour  milk,  pro- 
motive  of  health  in  summer  time.  Sweet  milk  tends  to  bil- 
iousness in  sedentary  persons  ;  sour  milk  is  antagonistic.  The 
Greeks  and  Turks  are  passionately  fond  of  sour  milk.  The 
shepherds  use  rennet,  and  the  milk  dealers  alum,  to  make  it 
sour  the  sooner.  Buttermilk  acts  like  watermelons  on  the 
system. 


LIGHTNING  STEOKE. 

IT  is  said  that  exposure  to  the  rain,  or  being  drenched  with 
buckets  of  water,  seems  to  have  some  agency  in  restoring  per- 
sons to  life  who  have  been  prostrated  by  lightning. 

It  is  better  to  take  some  precautions  against  the  lightning, 
which  will  be  the  more  easily  remembered,  and  the  better  ap- 
plied, if  some  explanations  are  given  as  to  the  nature  of  light- 
ning. 

There  is  a  stillness  in  the  atmosphere,  when-  all  parts  of  it 
are  of  equal  temperature,  whether  cold  or  hot,  for  the  air  is 
then  in  equilibrium.  But  if  one  part  be  hot,  and  the  other 
be  cold,  as  in  two  adjoining  rooms,  the  moment  the  door  be- 
tween is  opened  there  is  a  commotion,  and  the  cold  air  rushes 
into  the  warmer  room. 

If  two  vessels  of  water  adjoin,  and  are  connected  by  a  hollow 
tube  under  the  surface,  both  bodies  of  water  are  still,  if  each 
vessel  is  filled  to  an  equal  height.  But  if  one  vessel  has  a 
greater  depth  of  water  than  the  other,  there  is  a  commotion 
until  an  equilibrium  is  secured. 

When  the  atmosphere  about  us  is  uniformly  filled  or  satu- 
rated with  electricity,  there  is  quiet,  safety,  equilibrium.  But 
if  a  layer,  either  side,  has  more  or  less  electricity  than  the  one 
about  us,  there  is  a  passing  of  the  electricity  from  one  to  the 
other,  until  each  body  of  air  is  alike  filled,  or  equally  satu- 
rated. But,  with  this  passing,  there  is  noise ;  as  the  passing 
of  air  makes  the  noise  of  wind,  and  the  passage  of  water 


424  LIGHTNING   STROKE. 

causes  roaring,  so  the  noise  made  by  the  passage  of  electricity 
is  called  thunder ;  the  force  of  it  is  the  lightning,  as  the  force 
of  wind,  or  moving  water,  carries  us  away,  according  to  its 
rapidity ;  but  lightning,  like  a  cannon-ball,  moves  so  swiftly, 
that  the  body  which  it  strikes  has  not  time  to  have  motion 
imparted  to  it,  and  it  is  shivered  or  perforated ;  the  compari- 
son, however,  does  not  hold  good  at  all  points. 

But  the  electricity  of  the  fuller  section  or  body  of  air  gets 
to  the  other  which  has  less,  with  greater  or  less  facility,  ac- 
cording to  what  is  between  them,  or  connects  them.  If  a 
pointed  piece  of  metal  —  gold,  silver,  or  iron — connects 
these  bodies  of  different  fulness  of  electricity,  the  communi- 
cation or  stream  is  conducted  so  constantly  and  steadily  that 
there  is  no  noise  or  commotion,  there  is  no  obstruction.  But 
if  wood  is  used,  it  does  not  conduct  the  electricity  quick 
enough,  hence  wood  is  not  so  good  a  conductor  as  iron. 
Hence,  where  there  is  more  electricity  above  us  than  on  the 
earth,  it  comes  down  quietly  and  unnoticed,  if  there  are  a 
great  many  iron  communications  or  conductors,  such  as  light- 
ning-rods ;  but  if  trees,  only,  extend  from  one  to  the  other, 
or  tall  chimneys,  there  is  noise  and  destruction.  Hence,  it  is 
best  to  keep  away  from  chimneys  and  trees,  or  tall  objects, 
in  thunder-storms  in  warm  weather ;  therefore,  if  in  the 
house,  keep  as  near  the  centre  of  the  room  as  possible. 

But  the  course  or  direction  of  the  lightning  is  always  from 
the  fuller  air  to  that  which  is  less  full,  as  water  runs  from  the 
fuller  vessel  towards  the  other.  Hence,  if  the  air  in  the 
clouds  has  most  electricity,  the  "  stroke  "  comes  from  above  ; 
if,  however,  the  air  on  the  surface  is  fuller  of  electricity,  then 
the  stroke  is  upwards ;  this  is  the  reason,  in  many  cases,  why 
men  and  animals  are  killed  by  lightning  in  the  open  fields,  or 
on  prairies. 

But  these  unequally  filled  bodies  of  air  may  be  parallel  with 
each  other,  and,  if  a  house  is  between  them,  it  will  be  a  con- 
ductor, and  a  person  sitting  at  an  open  window  will  be  killed. 
If  the  window  had  been  down,  he  might  have  been  saved,  for 
glass  repels  lightning,  —  that  is,  jt  can  keep  it  from  passing ; 
hence,  if  a  man  stands  on  the  ground  and  takes  hold  of  an 
electrical  wire,  the  electricity  will  pass  freely  through  his 
body  into  the  earth ;  but  if  he  stands  on  a  glass  block,  the 


OCCUPATIONS   OF  LIFE.  425 

electricity  does  not  go  through,  but  collects  in  the  man  him- 
self; he  gets  full  of  it,  and  fire  flies  out  of  him  every  time 
you  touch  him. 

Lightning,  or  electricity,  has  a  love,  so  to  speak,  for  metals, 
has  an  affinity  for  them,  or  seeks  for  them ;  hence,  the  less  of 
iron,  or  steel,  or  other  metals,  you  have  about  your  persons 
during  a  thunder-storm  in  summer,  the  safer  you  are. 


OCCUPATIONS  OF  LIFE. 

WHEN  a  youth  is  about  determining  what  he  shall  follow 
for  a  living,  the  first  rule  is  to  select  the  employment  which 
he  likes  best,  — one  which  he  can  follow  con  amore,  that  is, 
with  the  most  satisfaction  to  his  inclinations,  tastes,  or  de- 
sires, always  presupposing  that  it  is  not  merely  an  allowable 
calling,  but  one  that  is  useful  and  honorable. 

The  second  inquiry  should  be,  Will  health  admit  of  it? 
Sickly,  or  even  merely  feeble  persons,  should  not  think,  for  a 
moment,  of  any  indoor  occupation.  It  is  worse  than  suicidal ; 
because,  besides  the  risk  of  destroying  their  own  lives,  there 
are  chances  of  this  being  done  not  soon  enough  to  prevent 
the  introduction  of  a  diseased  progeny,  to  be  life-long  mis- 
erables  themselves,  and  to  be  a  burden  to  others.  Of  the  in- 
door occupations,  some  of  the  most  trying  to  the  human  con- 
stitution are  working  in  cotton,  hemp,  paints,  dyeing  furs, 
tobacco,  lucifer  matches,  manufacturers'  trimmings,  and  the 
like,  involving  the  filling  of  the  air  with  minute  particles. 

Blondes,  —  that  is,  persons  with  light  hair,  fair  skin,  and  blue 
eyes,  —  as  also  those  having  sandy  or  reddish  hair,  should,  by 
all  means,  select  some  active,  outdoor  vocation. 

Brunettes,  persons  having  a  dark  skin,  indicating  the  bil- 
ious temperament,  accompanied,  usually,  with  black  hair  and 
dark  eyes,  should  select  a  calling,  which,  whether  indoor  or 
out,  will  require  them  to  be  on  their  feet,  moving  about  nearly 
all  the  time,  in  order  to  "work  off"  the  constantly  accumu- 
lating bile. 

The  mixed  temperaments  can  best  bear  sedentary,  indoor 
occupation  ;  such  as  a  combination  of  the  bilious  and  nervous. 


426  NOSEOLOGY. 

Spare  persons,  not  having  much  flesh,  but  enough  of  the  ner- 
vous and  sanguine  temperament  to  give  them  a  wiriness  of 
constitution,  —  these  can  bear  indoor  occupations  best ;  their 
activity,  arising  from  the  nervous  temperament,  keeping  them 
in  motion  (the  tongue,  anyhow,  if  women),  while  their  hope- 
fulness, arising  from  the  sanguine  temperament,  keeps  np 
their  spirits,  which  is  an  element  as  essential  to  success  as  it 
is  to  health. 

But,  of  all  human  occupations  which  do  not  render  a  man 
amenable  to  the  laws  of  his  country,  the  most  universally  and 
invariably  destructive  to  the  health  of  the  body,  as  well  as 
that  of  the  mind  and  heart,  and  yet  coveted  by  many,  although 
it  is  the  hardest  work  in  the  world,  —  is  that  of  having  nothing 
to  do. 


NOSEOLOGY. 

SOME  persons  have  an  ugly  habit  of  jerking  out  the  little 
hairs  growing  inside  the  nostrils  ;  the  surface  from  which  they 
grow  is  exceedingly  sensitive,  and  the  slightest  touch  of  one 
of  them  causes  an  itching,  or  titillation,  which  is  quite  sure 
to  arrest  the  attention,  and  thus  an  effectual  guard  is  placed 
against  insects  and  worms  crawling  in  during  sleep. 

In  addition,  each  individual  hair  resists  the  passage  of  air, 
and,  altogether,  they  make  a  valuable  respirator,  by  detaining 
the  very  cold  air  from  rushing  into  the  lungs,  — the  fruitful 
cause  of  deadly  pneumonias  (intiammmation  of  the  lungs). 
And  more  than  all,  being  so  near  the  gristle,  the  skin  has  very 
little  vitality,  very  little  power  of  healing,  and  if  this  healing 
is  baffled  at  too  short  intervals,  by  the  tearing  away  of  these 
hairs,  that  power  is  soon  lost,  and  a  cancerous  sore  is  the  result. 

Some  persons  are  deluded  into  the  belief,  that  drawing  water 
up  through  the  nose  to  wash  it  out  is  beneficial ;  it  can  only 
result  in  clearing  off  that  bland  fluid  which  nature  throws  out 
for  the  lubrication  of  the  parts,  and  to  prevent  their  becoming 
dry  by  the  constant  passage  of  the  air  over  them  ;  all  are 
familiar  with  that  uncomfortable  dryncss  in  a  common  cold. 
The  purest  water  has  great  harshness  compared  with  the  soft 
fluids  which  nature  manufactures  for  her  own  purposes. 


WELL  AND  SPRING  CLEANING.  427 

Bleeding  from  the  nose,  when  spontaneous,  should,  in  al- 
most all  cases,  be  let  alone.  It  is  an  effort  of  nature  to 
relieve  herself  of  internal  congestions,  of  a  surplus  of  blood, 
often  giving  instantaneous  and  grateful  relief  from  headache 
and  other  ailments.  A  teaspoonful  of  blood  from  the  nose 
has  prevented  many  a  fatal  attack  of  apoplexy ;  hence  a  nose 
bleeding  is  sometimes  the  safety-valve  of  life. 

We  once  saw  an  infant  apparently  dying  from  an  overdose 
of  paregoric,  given  by  an  ignorant  mother  to  keep  it  quiet 
while  travelling  in  a  stage-coach ;  but,  by  the  gushing  of 
blood  from  the  nose,  it  at  once  revived  and  was  saved. 

It  is  time  enough  to  interfere  with  a  bleeding  from  the  nose, 
when  a  tablespoonful  has  dropped,  or  when  it  is  seen  to  come 
out  in  a  continuous  stream ;  then  the  patient  should  sit  up- 
right, and  have  cold  water  poured  on  the  head,  or  a  cushion 
of  fine  ice  kept  over  the  whole  scalp ;  if  more  is  needed, 
snuff  up  powdered  alum,  or  alum- water,  or  the  fine  dust  from 
a  tea-canister,  or  the  scrapings  of  the  inside  of  tanned  leather. 
A  spontaneous  bleeding  at  the  nose  is  nature  declaring  that 
there  is  too  much  blood  in  the  body ;  then,  not  an  atom  of 
food  should  be  eaten  for  twenty-four  hours. 


WELL  AND   SPRING   CLEANING. 

As  spring  approaches,  we  earnestly  advise  all  persons  who 
use  well  water  and  spring  water,  to  have  both  wells  and 
springs  thoroughly  cleaned  out,  and  then  washed  out  in  early 
May,  and  also  during  October ;  as  there  is  strong  reason  to 
believe  that  the  settlings  which  have  accumulated,  including 
decayed  vegetation,  impart  their  disease-engendering  quali- 
ties to  the  water,  and  thus  originate  some  of  the  most  dan- 
gerous forms  of  low  or  typhoid  fever,  at  a  time  of  the  year 
when  the  weather  is  so  cool  as  to  preclude  the  idea  of  their 
arising  from  vegetable  decomposition.  The  stench  of  the 
debris  at  the  bottom  of  wells  should  induce  all  cleanly  per- 
sons to  expurgate  them  thoroughly,  aside  from  considerations 
of  health. 


428  PRESERVATION  OF  FOOD. 


PRESERVATION  OF  FOOD. 

IT  is  the  common  air  which  sustains  the  life  of  all  that 
breathes  or  grows ;  but  when  breath  and  growth  cease,  that 
same  air  is  the  agent  of  destruction,  and  reduces  all  to  ashes 
and  dust.  But  in  proportion  as  we  can  successfully  exclude 
the  common  air  from  anything  which  has  parted  with  life, 
whether  animal  or  vegetable,  it  may  be  indefinitely  preserved. 
Meat  begins  to  decompose  after  a  few  hours'  exposure  to  a 
warm  sun,  but  human  ingenuity  has  devised  means  for  keep- 
ing it  fresh  for  weeks,  and  months,  and  years  even  in  warm 
climates.  Milk  begins  to  decompose  within  an  hour  after  it  is 
drawn  from  the  cow,  but  the  genius  of  Gail  Borden  has  laid 
New  York  under  contribution  by  supplying  it  with  a  con- 
centrated article  which  maintains  its  freshness  for  weeks,  and 
even  months.  This  gentleman  is  also  the  unacknowledged 
instrument  in  the  preservation  of  Dr.  Kane  and  his  men,  on 
their  mission  of  humanity  for  Sir  John  Franklin,  for  they 
were  rescued  from  imminent  starvation  by  food  prepared  by  a 
process  of  his  own  devising.  It  is  not  known  whether  he  is 
still  pushing  his  experiments  in  that  direction,  but  it  is  very 
certain  if  government  had  extended  to  him  a  modicum  of  the 
moral  countenance  and  material  aid  bestowed  on  experiments 
in  the  construction  of  murderous  fire-arms,  humanity  might 
have  been  benefited  to  an  incalculably  greater  extent. 

The  secret  of  the  success  of  the  self-sealing  cans  in  preserv- 
ing fruits,  berries,  and  vegetables,  lies  in  the  perfection  and 
handiness  with  which  common  air  is  excluded.  Yet,  after  all, 
they  are  but  a  questionable  improvement  of  the  plan  of  our 
grandmothers,  who  used  to  till  common  bottles  with  the 
desired  fruit,  then  pouring  in  hot  syrup  to  till  up  the  in- 
terstices, the  cork  was  put  in  loosely,  and  the  whole  placed  in 
boiling  water  for  a  minute  or  two  ;  the  cork  was  then  driven 
home,  the  bottles  placed  neck  downwards  in  a  trench  in  the 
earth,  in  the  cellar,  covered  over  and  let  alone  for  use  in  after 
months,  or  years. 

Sir  John  Ross  states,  that  a  tin  case  of  preserved  beef  was 
landed  from  the  "Fury"  in  August,  1825,  and  taken  by  him 


AUTUMNAL  DISEASES.  429 

in  July,  1833.  This  case  he  presented  to  a  friend  several 
years  later,  and  in  April,  1859,  it  was  opened  at  a  bachelor's 
party.  "  Along  with  the  entries  came  the  contents  of  the  tin 
case  of  boiled  beef,  which  proved  to  be  as  sweet  and  fresh,  and 
containing  as  much  nourishment  as  it  formerly  did,  when 
carried  to  the  Arctic  regions  in  the  unfortunate  Fury,  in 
1825."  Taking  this  statement  as  true,  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  it,  food  carefully  put  up  can  be  preserved  thirty- 
four  years. 

The  old-time  plan  of  bottles  buried,  is  safer  and  better  than 
any  other  for  the  preservation  of  fruits  and  berries  for  domes- 
tic use.  Tin  cans  and  glazed  crockery  are  liable  to  be  acted 
on  by  the  acid  of  fruits  and  berries,  so  as  to  produce  poison- 
ous effects,  but  glass  is  indestructible  by  such  chemical  agents  ; 
it  is  cheap,  and  can  be  had  anywhere ;  besides,  it  is  more 
readily  and  more  perfectly  cleaned,  and  the  mode  of  prepara- 
tion is  simple  and  easy. 

Those  who  prefer  to  use  the  patent  self-sealing  cans  or  jars, 
should  give  the  glass  ones  the  preference ;  next,  the  glazed 
stoneware ;  and  tin,  the  last.  It  would  greatly  promote  the 
health  and  comfort  of  families,  if  bushels  of  fruits,  and  berries, 
and  tomatoes  were  put  up  for  winter  use,  instead  of  quarts 
and  gallons ;  not  in  the  costly  and  laborious  method  of  old- 
time  "  preserving,"  but  on  the  more  simple  plan  of  the  present 
day,  by  which  they  can  be  preserved  in  their  nearly  natural 
state,  little  or  no  sweetening  being  required. 


AUTUMNAL  DISEASES. 

THESE  are  diarrhoeas,  dysenteries,  and  fevers.  Diarrhoea 
is  when  the  evacuations  are  thin,  frequent,  and  weakening. 
Dysentery  is  when  there  is  blood  in  the  discharges,  accom- 
panied with  a  distressing  straining  without  accomplishing  any- 
thing, called  "  tormina  and  tenesuius  "  by  physicians.  Fever 
needs  no  description. 

Diarrhosa,  dysentery,  fever  and  ague,  bilious  fever,  conges- 
tive fever,  typhoid  fever,  yellow  fever,  are  all  one  and  the 
same  disease,  in  the  opinion  of  many  eminent  physicians, 


430  AUTUMNAL  DISEASES. 

differing  only  in  degree,  commencing  with  diarrhoea;  this 
appears  earliest  in  the  season,  and  attacks  those  who  are  the 
weakliest,  or  are  most  susceptible  of  disease. 

Those  who  have  a  stronger  constitution  hold  out  longer,  but 
the  causes  of  disease  being  still  and  steadily  in  operation,  their 
effects  are  concentrated,  and  at  last  manifest  themselves  in  the 
more  aggravated  form  of  dysentery  in  September. 

In  October,  bilious  fevers  become  the  ruling  disease. 

Persons  still  more  robust,  who  hold  out  until  November, 
fall  under  the  terrible  congestive  chill,  or  typhoid  fever,  to 
perish  within  a  few  days. 

Yellow  fever  is  the  result  of  a  more  rapid  generation  of  the 
causes  of  these  ailments,  and  in  a  more  concentrated  or  viru- 
lent form,  but  being  more  speedy  in  its  manifestations,  is  not, 
in  proportion  to  the  number  of  persons  attacked,  as  certainly 
deadly  as  fevers  of  the  typhoid  or  congestive  type ;  hence 
yellow  fevers  begin  in  July  and  August. 

Multitudes  of  lives  would  be  saved  every  fall  if  the  people 
could  be  induced  to  give  the  subject  a  little  examination,  and 
follow  it  up  by  the  timely  observance  of  a  few  precautions. 

These  ailments  arise  from  the  decomposition  of  vegetable 
matter,  requiring,  however,  three  conditions. 

There  must  be  vegetable  matter. 

There  must  be  moisture. 

There  must  be  heat. 

When  these  three  conditions  meet,  a  gas  is  always  the 
result;  that  gas  is  called  miasm,  which  means  an  emanation, 
but  it  is  an  emanation  of  a  particular  kind  —  it  is  that  which 
arises  from  decaying  vegetation  alone.  The  emanations  from 
other  things,  as  a  carrion,  or  a  sulphur  spring,  or  privy,  are 
denominated  malaria  —  simply  "  bad  air." 

Miasm,  the  destructive  emanation  from  decay  ing  vegetation , 
as  wood,  leaves,  weeds,  and  the  like,  has  one  marked  dis- 
tinctive feature,  although  a  negative  one,  —  it  has  no  smell,  it 
is  unseen  and  unfelt;  chemistry,  with  all  its  power,  cannot 
detect  its  presence. 

But  worse  than  all  this,  while  the  carrion  drives  us  with 
a  power  from  its  neighborhood,  miasm  not  only  gives  no 
intimation  of  its  deadly  presence,  but  comes  in  an  atmosphere 
so  cool  and  so  delightfully  refreshing,  that  the  temptation  to 


AUTUMNAL  DISEASES.  431 

indulge  in  taking  in  delicious  draughts  is  as  irresistible  as  the 
lusciousuess  of  yielding  to  sleep  on  the  point  of  being  frozen 
to  death. 

But  here  is  an  apparent  contradiction.  It  is  apparent  only. 
Investigation  not  only  confirms  the  statements,  but  points  out 
the  path  of  safety,  uniform,  and  infallible. 

Miasm  is  generated  by  heat  of  over  eighty  degrees  Fahren- 
heit, but  this  so  rarefies  the  atmosphere,  that  it  shoots  up  into 
the  sky  as  instantly  as  an  inflated  balloon,  and  as  long  as  the 
weather  continues  hot  it  is  kept  among  the  clouds. 

But  the  cool  nights  of  the  fall  condense  this  atmosphere  ;  by 
which  condensation,  it  descends  at  sundown  to  the  surface  of 
the  earth,  where  it  is  breathed  until  the  weather  becomes 
warm  enough  next  day  to  'carry  it  up  again.  Hence  the 
popular  prejudice  against  night  air. 

The  Roman  authorities  do  not  station  officials  to  caution 
travellers  against  stopping  in  the  Campagua  during  the  day- 
time, but  in  the  night,  when  its  swamps  are  reeking  with 
disease  and  death. 

For  the  same  reason,  forty  years  ago  the  Charleston  mer- 
chants in  summer  were  not  afraid  to  ride  to  the  city  at  mid- 
day and  transact  their  business,  but  a  night's  rest  there  was 
almost  certain  death. 

But  not  to  make  this  article  too  long  for  universal  quotation, 
which  ought  to  be  accorded  to  it,  it  suffices  to  point  out  its 
practicalities  in  all  places  where  autumnal  dieases  prevail, 
especially  if  they  are  epidemic. 

1.  Sleep  with  the  outer  doors  and  windows  closed,  especial- 
ly if  the  chamber  is  on  the  first  floor  or  story,  or  even  second. 
This  keeps  the  atmosphere  of  the  room  so  warm,  that  the 
iniasm  is  kept  at  the  ceiling. 

2.  Take  supper  at  sundown,  and  breakfast  at  daylight,  or 
at  least  before  leaving  the  house  in  the  morning,  even  to  go 
outside  of  the  door,  or  sit  at  an  open  window  ;  this  has  the 
effect   to   prevent   the    stomach  from   absorbing   the  deadly 
miasm,  as  it  is  preoccupied  by  taking  something  more  material 
and  substantial.     No  doubt  the  Dutch  custom  of  eating  break- 
fast by  daylight,  and  of  the  Creole,  that  is,  the  native  popula- 
tion of  Louisiana,  taking  their  coffee  in  bed,  were  founded  on 
observations  in  this  connection  without  knowing  the  reason. 


432  DYSENTERY. 

3.  If  a  fire  is  kindled  in  every  dwelling  at  sundown  and 
sunrise,  and  the  family  sit  in  the  same  room  until  bed-time, 
with  all    outer  doors  and  windows  closed,  and   kept  closed 
during  the  night,  all  autumnal  diseases,  as  epidemics,  would 
become  impossible  of  occurrence,  because  it  would  be  con- 
trary to  physical  law. 

4.  A  large  lump  of  ice  suspended  in  a  sleeper's  room,  so  as 
to  keep  the  air  at  the  level  of  his  breathing,  at  seventy-five 
degrees,  would  be  equally  effective  in  this  regard,'  because 
miasm  cannot  be  held  in  solution  in  an  atmosphere  of  that 
temperature.    It  would,  as  it  were,  be  precipitated  to  the  floor 
of  the  room,  as  we  know  carbonic  acid  gas  is  thrown  to  the 
floor  by  a  certain  degree  of  cold. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  these  things  are  not  more 
thoroughly  known  among  physicians,  as  well  as  the  people, 
for  practical  and  rational  attention  to  them  would  avert  an 
incalculable  amount  of  human  suffering. 


DYSENTERY. 

MULTITUDES  of  lives  are  lost  by  ignorance  of  the  nature  of 
simple  diseases  at  their  first  appearance.  Few  know  the 
essential  difference  between  diarrhoea,  which  is  ordinarily  a 
trivial  disease,  and  dysentery,  which  is  often  a  speedily  fatal 
malady. 

Diarrhceal  discharges  always  afford  a  feeling  of  relief,  with- 
out pain  necessarily,  or  blood.  Dysentery,  on  the  contrary, 
is  always  attended  with  painful  gripings,  with  distressing  and 
ineffectual  straining,  and  more  or  less  blood. 

In  dysentery,  too  much  blood  is  thrown  in  upon  the  bowels, 
and  nature  attempts  to  relieve  herself  by  passing  it  off.  If 
she  is  interfered  with,  and  the  mouths  of  the  little  tubes  which 
are  throwing  off  the  blood  are  suddenly  closed  up  by  styptics, 
such  as  alum,  or  sugar  of  lead,  or  logwood,  and  the  like,  or 
by  opiates  in  any  form,  which,  in  effect,  operate  in  the  same 
way,  then  the  blood  takes  another  direction,  and  goes  to  the 
brain,  oppresses  it,  weighing  down  all  the  powers  of  life,  and 
there  is  delirium,  stupor,  death.  These  are  vital  facts,  known 


SCROFULA.  433 

to  all  educated  physicians  ;  and  }ret  the  very  first  effort  made 
in  the  cure  of  dysentery  is  to  stop  the  blood,  and  its  diminu- 
tion is  considered  encouraging  by  the  ignorant.  There  is  in- 
tolerable heat  and  thirst  in  dysentery ;  this  heat  extends  from 
the  tip  of  the  tongue  all  through  the  body ;  this  attracts  more 
blood,  just  as  a  mustard  plaster  attracts  blood.  The  true 
cure  is  to  cool  the  internal  surface  of  the  bowels,  and  nature 
calls  ravenously  for  this  cooling ;  yet  every  swallow  of  ice- 
water  increases  the  pain,  but  ice  broken  up  in  pieces  small 
enough  to  be  swallowed  whole,  and  taken  to  the  fullest  desire 
and  capacity  of  the  patient,  cools  off  the  inner  surface  of  the 
intestinal  canal,  just  as  certainly  as  small  lumps  of  ice,  con- 
stantly placed  on  a  red-hot  iron  surface,  will,  at  length,  cool 
it.  As  an  aliment,  raw  beef,  in  the  shape  of  mince-meat, 
given  in  quantities  of  two  tablespoonfuls  four  times  a  day,  at 
equal  intervals,  facilitates  the  cure,  while  it  sustains  the  pa- 
tient. These  things  are  advised  as  domestic  expedients  only, 
until  a  physician  can  be  had. 

Dysentery  is  very  generally  caused  by  a  sudden  cooling  of 
the  skin,  especially  after  exercise ;  or,  in  weakly  persons,  a 
sudden  change  in  the  weather  is  all-sufficient,  particularly 
when,  with  a  greater  coolness,  there  is  a  raw  dampness  in  the 
atmosphere.  Thus  it  is  that  this  serious  ailment  is  so  common 
in  the  fall  of  the  year,  —  midday  being  hot,  and  the  cool 
nights  closing,  abruptly,  the  pores  of  the  skin,  which  the 
heats  of  the  day  had  relaxed.  The  best  preventives  are  wear- 
ing woollen  flannel  shirts,  and  having  fires  kindled  in  the 
family  room  at  sundown,  especially  in  valley  situations,  and 
those  otherwise  damp,  beginning  these  on  the  first  cool  night 
of  the  fall. 


SCROFULA. 

THIS  is  a  term  which  takes  its  name  from  a  Latin  word, 
which  signifies  sow ;  while  the  Greeks  used  a  word  of  the 
same  meaning  for  the  same  disease,  possibly  because  both 
Greeks  and  Romans  found  that  those  families  suffered  most 
with  scrofula  who  lived  after  the  brutish  manner  of  swine,  al- 
though the  elevated  and  refined  are  not  exempt  from  the 


434  SCROFULA. 

taint.  Scrofula  is  an  error  of  nutrition,  and  hence  may  at- 
tack all  colors,  constitutions,  and  temperaments ;  but  those 
who  have  light  hair  and  fair  skin  are  most  subject  to  it. 

All  through  the  body  there  are  little  bunches  of  vessels, 
called  "  glands,"  which,  in  their  natural  state,  are  not  seen ; 
but,  if  diseased,  they  swell,  and,  when  near  the  surface  of  the 
skin,  form  protuberances  of  irregular  shapes,  always  rounded ; 
hence,  the  ancients,  who  often  named  things  from  an  apparent 
quality,  called  them  glands,  from  their  resemblance  to  an 
acorn,  or  a  bunch  of  them. 

Our  aliment,  that  which  nourishes  the  body,  must  pass 
through  what  is  called  the  absorbent  glands  before  it  is  fit  for 
nutrition  ;  in  these  glands  it  undergoes  considerable  changes  ; 
but,  if  they  are  in  an  unnatural  condition,  are  hardened  or 
swollen,  the  changes  made  are  not  perfect,  —  are  not  health- 
ful ;  hence  it  is  that  scrofula  is,  essentially,  an  error  of  nutri- 
tion ;  the  food  does  not  give  all  its  strength ;  the  person  may 
eat  a  great  deal,  and  may  even  look  stout  and  robust,  but  the 
appearance  is  deceptive, — there  is  no  endurance. 

Scrofula,  then,  is  manifested  in  an  abnormal  condition  of 
the  glands,  giving  a  name  to  the  disease  according  to  the  lo- 
cality of  the  part  affected ;  if  in  the  sides  of  the  neck,  it  is 
called  king's  evil,  because,  in  earlier  ages,  the  touch  of  a  king 
was  thought  a  cure  ;  if  the  glands  of  the  joints  are  affected,  it 
is  white  swelling ;  if  in  the  lungs,  it  is  consumption ;  if  in  the 
bowels,  it  is  tabes  mesenterica,  or  consumption  of  the  bowels ; 
the  person  wears  away  to  skin  and  bone,  and  is  literally  con- 
sumed to  death,  without  any  cough  whatever. 

Why  the  glands  of  one  part  should  become  more  particu- 
larly diseased  than  elsewhere,  is  simply  because  that  part  has 
been  weakened  by  some  violence  offered  to  it. 

But  how  do  the  glands  become  diseased  at  all,  or  what  is 
the  cause  of  their  unnatural  condition?  In  other  words, 
What  causes  scrofula? 

Most  generally,  persons  are  born  scrofulous,  in  consequence 
of  one  or  both  parents  being  diseased  in  some  way  or  other ; 
but  scrofula  may  be  originated  in  any  constitution  by  pro- 
tracted wrong  living,  such  as  a  want  of  personal  cleanliness, 
or  a  continued  dwelling  in  low,  or  damp,  or  filthy  localities, 
or  in  habitual  excesses  as  to  the  animal  appetites  and  passions. 


SCROFULA.  435 

Scrofula,  like  insanity  or  family  resemblances,  may  pass 
over  a  generation.  A  man  may  be  scrofulous ;  his  children 
may  not  have  a  trace  of  it,  yet  his  grandchildren  may  be  de- 
cidedly so. 

A  person  may  be  very  slightly  scrofulous,  —  only  a  mere 
trace  of  it,  —  so  little  of  it  as  to  be  scarcely  perceptible,  or 
it  may  be  of  such  an  aggravated  character  as  to  distort  the 
whole  body. 

As  a  general  rule,  scrofula  shows  itself  in  some  kind  of 
breaking  out  on  the  skin,  or  in  some  affection  of  the  eyes. 
As  scrofula  is,  essentially,  an  error  of  nutrition,  by  which 
the  food  does  not  impart  its  full  strength  to  the  system,  it  is 
characterized  by  a  want  of  endurance,  by  a  lack  of  power  of 
resistance,  of  warding  off  disease,  or  averting  "colds  ;  "  hence, 
scrofulous  persons  take  cold  very  easily,  and  often  describe 
themselves  as  "  always  taking  cold,"  or  "  the  least  thing  in  the 
world  gives  me  a  cold,"  and  that  "cold"  "settles"  in  the 
weak  part ;  if  in  the  tonsils,  they  swell  internally ;  if  the 
lungs  are  the  weak  part,  a  bad  cold  is  the  result;  if  in  the 
head,  —  and  a  great  many  have  a  weakness  there,  —  it  is  de- 
scribed as  a  cold  in  the  head.  Under  certain  conditions,  a 
scrofulous  person  has  a  greater  chance  of  long  life  than  one 
who  is  entirely  free  from  it,  especially  if  well-informed  and 
well  to  do  ;  because,  being  conscious  of  a  want  of  robustness 
of  constitution,  common  sense  dictates  carefulness,  and  a 
systematic  avoidance  of  those  causes  of  ailment  which  obser- 
vation indicates  as  the  uniform  precursor  of  particular  symp- 
toms, while  the  fact  of  being  "  well  to  do  "  gives  the  means  of 
nursing,  and  of  guarding  against  those  exposures,  over-exer- 
tions, and  deprivations,  which  are  the  fruitful  sources  of 
sickness  to  the  unfortunate  poor. 

A  person  born  scrofulous,  or  becoming  so  after  birth,  need 
not  necessarily  remain  so  to  any  specially  hurtful  extent.  If, 
for  example,  a  man  suffers  from  white  swelling,  or  a  long  and 
tedious  "  running  "  in  the  neck  from  king's  evil,  the  "  ill  hu- 
mors" of  the  system,  as  they  are  called,  seem  to  find  vent 
there,  leaving  the  constitution  comparatively  healthy,  and  a 
long  life  of  reasonable  health  is  the  result. 

Scrofula  may  be  almost  entirely  "  worked  "  out  of  the  sys- 
tem in  another  way,  as  by  a  great  and  protracted  change  in 


436  SCROFULA. 

the  habits  of  life, —  such  a  change  as  involves  large  outdoor 
activities  for  the  greater  part  of  every  twenty-four  hours.  The 
same  thing  may  be  accomplished,  to  a  great  extent,  indoors, 
as,  where  a  sedentary  life  is  followed,  by  spending  a  large 
portion  of  each  day  in  active  employment  on  foot,  especially 
if  the  mind  is  deeply  and  pleasurably  interested  in  that  em- 
ployment; more  decided  results  will  follow,  if  the  aid  is 
given,  meanwhile,  of  judicious  personal  habits,  such  as  scru- 
pulous cleanliness  of  body  and  clothing,  of  regular,  full,  and 
sufficient  sleep ;  of  plain,  simple,  and  nutritious  food,  eaten 
at  regular  intervals  of  five  or  six  hours,  and  nothing  between, 
with  that  daily  regularity  which  is  essential  to  health  under 
all  circumstances. 

A  scrofulous  person  should  eat  fresh  meats  largely,  and 
bread,  and  fruit,  and  berries  of  every  description,  using 
vegetables  sparingly. 

In  short,  whatever  promotes  high  bodily  health,  promotes 
the  eradication  of  a  scrofulous  taint ;  hence  it  is  the  greatest 
wisdom,  on  the  part  of  those  who  are  scrofulous,  to  study  how 
and  what  gives  to  them  the  greatest  general  good  health,  and 
to  live  accordingly. 

Scrofula  manifests  itself  externally  in  some,  as  in  lumps, 
or  a  variety  of  breakings  out  on  the  skin  ;  in  others,  it  causes 
some  internal  malady.  In  either  case,  the  essential  disease 
is  the  same  ;  it  is  in  the  system,  in  the  blood,  and  the  attempt 
should  be  to  eradicate,  not  to  cover  up. 

If  there  is  an  external  manifestation,  external  appliances  can 
never  radically  cure,  can  never  eradicate ;  their  tendency  is 
to  suppress,  to  drive  inwards,  or  elsewhere ;  generally,  if  not 
always,  to  find  refuge  in  some  more  vital  part;  and  the  whole 
history  reads,  "  cured,  then  died."  Hence,  external  manifes- 
tations of  scrofula  are  not,  indeed,  signs  of  health,  but  they 
are  signs  of  safety.  It  is  when  measles  "  strike  in  "  that  there 
is  danger. 

Salt-rheum  is  scrofula,  and  afflicts  persons  for  many  years, 
then  sometimes  disappears  for  "good  and  all,"  to  the  great 
gratification  of  the  patient.  The  next  report  is  "consump- 
tion," if  in  grown  persons  ;  *  water  on  the  brain,"  if  in  young 
children. 


THE  LONGEST  LIVERS.  437 

As  to  taking  internal  remedies,  one  of  three  things  is  the 
uniform  result :  — 

First.     The  medicine  gradually  loses  its  power. 

Second.     The  system  is  benefited  only  while  it  is  taken  ;  or, 

Third.  The  remedy  gradually  poisons  the  system,  or  im- 
pairs the  tone  of  the  stomach,  thus  aggravating  the  "  error  of 
nutrition,"  and  hastening  a  fatal  result. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regreted  that  these  things  are  not  gen- 
erally known ;  an  incalculable  amount  of  human  suffering 
would  thereby  be  prevented,  and  the  unfortunate  poor  saved 
many  a  hard-earned  dollar. 

The  most  that  can  be  expected,  as  to  the  cure  of  scrofula, 
is,  that  it  may  be  kept  in  abeyance,  —  may  be  kept  under  by 
wise  habits  of  life,  such  as  regularity,  cleanliness,  temperance 
in  all  things,  and  daily  industry  in  the  open  air,  living,  the 
meanwhile,  on  plain,  simple,  nutritious  food,  of  which  fresh 
meats,  ripe  fruits,  coarse  bread,  and  cold  water,  are  the  main. 
We  believe  that  no  medicine  ever  eradicated  scrofula,  or  kept 
it  under  any  longer  than  while  it  is  taken. 


THE  LONGEST  LIVERS. 

THE  longest  livers  are  they  who  dwell  in  palaces  and  poor- 
houses.  As  contradictory  as  this  appears,  it  is  not  the  less 
true.  The  reason  of  it  is  in  the  fact,  that,  knowing  they  are 
provided  for,  the  mind  is  at  rest,  and  is  wholly  disencumbered 
of  that  eating  anxiety,  that  care  for  to-morrow,  which  press 
so  heavily  upon  the  mass  of  mankind.  The  very  rich  and 
the  very  poor  are  not  the  healthiest ;  on  the  contrary,  they 
are  seldom  entirely  well ;  this  indisposition  takes  away  what 
little  appetite  a  loafing  life  allows  them,  hence,  for  a  short 
time,  they  eat  almost  nothing ;  this  gives  the  stomach  time 
to  recuperate,  while  nature  works  off  the  surplusage,  and, 
by  this  double  operation,  they  are  made  as  well  as  ever  in  a 
few  days.  Hence,  the  best  "  Life  Insurance  "  is  to  secure  for 
yourself,  at  the  earliest  possible  day,  a  moderate,  uniform, 
and  CERTAIN  income. 


438  A  ORICUL  TUBE. 


AGRICULTURE. 

NINE  times  out  of  ten  the  best  answer  which  a  physician 
can  give  to  the  patient,  who,  with  direful  look  and  dolorous 
tone,  inquires,  What  shall  I  do?  is,  Go  to  work. 

The  most  important  injunction  that  can  be  given  to  this 
fast  age,  whether  in  regard  to  solid  financial  prosperity,  or  to 
enduring  personal  enjoyment,  or  to  gladness  of  heart,  or 
health  of  body,  is,  Be  content  with  a  slow  and  moderate 
increase  of  your  substance. 

The  crying  educational  error  of  the  age  is,  allowing  so 
many  boys  and  girls  to  reach  adult  life  without  the  knowl- 
edge of  some  handicraft,  by  which  they  might  earn  a  living  in 
any  country,  in  case  they  were  reduced  to  penury.  There  are 
scores  of  thousands  of  persons  in  this  country  who  are  living 
from  hand  to  mouth,  whose  loss  of  a  single  day's  labor  would 
be  followed  by  a  dinnerless  day,  who  might  live  in  careless 
comfort  on  a  single  acre  of  land,  but  for  the  want  of  a  little 
patient  industry  and  self-denial.  Look  at  it :  — 

A  single  acre  of  land  will  readily  afford  room  for  forty 
apple  trees,  and  forty  bushels  to  a  tree  is  not  an  uncommon 
product,  making  sixteen  hundred  bushels  of  fruit,  which,  in 
midwinter,  in  any  of  our  large  cities  or  large  towns,  will 
readily  bring,  if  in  good  order,  half  a  dollar  a  bushel,  and 
sometimes  a  dollar,  by  the  barrel.  A  plain,  industrious,  and 
economical  family  in  the  country  can  live  comfortably  on  half 
that  amount  of  money. 

Nicholas  Longworth,  of  Cincinnati,  to  whose  industry, 
sagacity,  and  enterprise  this  nation  owes  a  large  debt  for  what 
he  has  done  to  promote  the  culture  and  perfection  of  the 
strawberry  and  the  grape,  writes,  that  in  Germany  an  acre  of 
grapes  will  yield  eight  hundred  gallons  of  wine,  whose  lowest 
value  is  one  dollar,  and  that  the  same  yield  can  be  had  here  ; 
and  when  once  in  bearing,  one  half  is  clear  profit. 

A  New  England  farmer,  of  forty  years'  experience,  writes, 
that  he  raises  six  hundred  bushels  of  onions  on  an  acre  of 
land ;  that  at  the  last  weeding,  in  August,  he  sows  turnip- 
seed,  and  gathers  a  crop  of  four  hundred  bushels ;  each  of 


WEARING  RUBBER  SHOES.  439 

these  sell  in  New  York,  and  other  large  cities  and  towns,  and 
sell  readily,  by  wholesale,  for  eighty  cents  a  bushel,  in  almost 
any  year. 

An  acre  of  cold,  marshy,  sandy  land  will  yield  forty 
barrels  of  cranberries,  which  often  sell  for  thirty  dollars  a 
barrel. 

An  acre  of  the  common  white  bean,  which  is  easily  cul- 
tivated, requires  but  little  skill,  and  which  is  not  affected  by 
frost  or  rot,  and  which  is  always  a  salable  article,  will  yield 
an  equally  profitable  crop,  if  well  managed. 

J.  W.  Manning  says  he  cultivated  a  piece  of  ground  "  on 
which  was  an  orchard  of  apple  trees,  some  of  them  four 
inches  in  diameter ;  one  hundred  and  fifty  grape  vines,  part  of 
them  in  bearing ;  a  hundred  and  thirty  currant  bushes  in 
bearing ;  fifty  hills  of  rhubarb,  and  one  third  of  the  whole  in 
the  Cutter  strawberry,  which,  in  a  season  of  thirty-five  days, 
yielded  five  hundred  quarts.  And  all  on  one  fifth  of  an  acre 
of  ground  !  " 

With  these  facts  before  us,  we  say  to  all,  if  you  want  to 
live  long  in  health,  and  quiet,  and  independence,  go  to  work 
in  the  love  of  it,  be  satisfied  with  moderate  gains,  cultivate 
moderate  ambitions,  practise  self-denials,  and  you  will  reap  a 
rich  reward  here  and  hereafter. 


WEARING  RUBBER  SHOES. 

THE  tendency  of  India-rubber  shoes  is  to  make  the  feet 
cold,  and  in  such  proportion  endanger  health ;  hence,  they 
are  useful  only  in  walking  when  the  ground  is  muddy  or 
sloshy  with  melting  snow  —  in  these  cases  they  are  invaluable, 
and  there  is  no  equal  substitute.  Two  rules  should  be  ob- 
served whenever  it  is  possible :  when  rubbers  are  on  the  feet 
persons  should  keep  moving,  and  remove  them  on  entering 
the  house,  if  it  is  intended  to  remain  over  a  few  minutes.  If 
the  rubbers  have  been  on  the  feet  several  hours,  both  shoes 
and  stockings  are  necessarily  damp  by  the  condensation  and 
confinement  of  the  perspiration,  therefore  all  should  be  re- 
moved, and  the  naked  foot  held  to  the  fire  until  warm  and  dry 


440  MORALS   OF  SICKNESS.  , 

in  every  part ;  if  then  a  pair  of  dry  stockings  are  put  on,  and 
a  pair  of  warmed  and  loose  slippers  or  shoes,  there  will  be  a 
feeling  of  comfort  for  the  remainder  of  the  day,  which  will 
more  than  compensate  for  the  trouble  taken,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  ailments  averted.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  as 
India-rubber  shoes  are  impervious  to  water  from  without,  and 
ought  not  to  be  worn  except  in  muddy  weather,  and  only 
then  while  the  wearer  is  in  motion,  so  leather  shoes,  ren- 
dered impervious  to  water,  by  blacking  or  by  any  other  means, 
should  be  used  like  India-rubbers,  temporarily,  and  when 
walking  in  mud  or  slosh.  For  common  purposes  the  old- 
fashioned  leather  boots  and  shoes  are  best,  if  kept  well 
blacked,  with  several  renewals  of  dry  socks  during  the  day  if 
the  feet  perspire  profusely.  As  cold  and  damp  feet  are  the 
avenues  of  death  to  multitudes  every  year,  a  systematic  atten- 
tion to  the  above  suggestions  would  save  many  a  valuable  life. 


MORALS  OF  SICKNESS. 

THERE  are  certain  forms  of  disease  which,  while  they  waste 
the  body,  depress  the  mind,  and  stupefy  the  moral  sentiment ; 
hence,  the  wise  physician  often  feels  compelled  to  address  his 
remedies  to  the  mind,  to  bring  the  religious  element  into 
requisition,  in  strong  appeals  to  a  sense  of  duty.  Sometimes 
there  is  not  left  energy  enough  for  an  effort  at  restoration. 
This  is  often  the  case  with  clergymen,  literary  men,  and  pro- 
fessors in  colleges.  One  of  these  is  like  a  man  just  entering 
the  current  above  the  falls  of  Niagara :  he  is  sensible  of  his 
danger,  feels  that  in  a  short  time  all  effort  will  be  unavailing, 
yet  he  has  not  the  moral  energy  requisite  to  make  use  of  the 
means  necessary  for  his  deliverance.  This  condition  is  in 
nearly  all  cases  the  result  of  dyspepsia ;  that  is,  it  is  the 
result  of  a  want  of  thorough  digestion  of  the  food,  a  defect 
which  is  brought  on  by  injudicious  eating.  Persons  who  use 
opium,  tobacco,  liquors,  or  strong  coffee  and  tea,  eventually 
fall  into  this  same  state.  No  Christian  man  will  have  any 
difficulty  in  saying  that  the  use  of  liquors  should  be  given  up 
as  a  duty,  under  such  circumstances.  But  let  the  physician 


MORALS  OF  SICKNESS.  441 

of  acknowledged  science  and  ability  press  upon  that  same 
man  the  duty  of  abandoning  the  use  of  tobacco,  or  of  adopting 
a  plainer  mode  of  feeding,  he  will  find  his  appeals  powerless. 
Can  a  man  be  guiltless  who  condemns  his  neighbor  for  drink- 
ing errors,  but  does  not  condemn  himself  for  errors  in  eating? 
In  other  cases,  where  comparatively  little  is  needed  beyond  a 
pill  or  two  a  month  for  a  short  time,  except  judicious  exercise, 
the  prescription  is  met  with,  "  Well,  I  cannot  spare  the  time  ; 
my  professional  duties  are  such  that  I  have  not  the  leisure." 
But  suppose  you  die,  what  then?  You  cannot  lose  now  an 
hour  a  day,  then  ALL  time  is  lost ! 

Physicians  well  know  that  three  fourths  of  the  ordinary 
attacks  of  sickness  are  the  result  of  imprudence ;  that  if  men 
lived  wisely,  the  average  age  would  be  full  threescore  years 
and  ten,  instead  of  half  that  term,  as  it  now  is. 

We  know  that  if  human  life  is  valuable  to  all,  the  increase 
of  its  duration  would  increase  its  value.  That  if  any  man  is 
useful  to  the  church  or  the  world  from  thirty  to  forty,  he 
would  be  still  more  useful  from  fifty  to  sixty  ;  and  that  it  is 
his  duty  to  protract  his  usefulness,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

Again,  none  will  deny  that  a  man  in  robust  health  is  more 
available  in  any  calling  than  he  would  be  if  he  were  an  invalid. 
If,  then,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  one  to  do  the  largest  amount 
of  good  possible  for  him  to  do,  he  is  doing  a  wrong  to 
society,  and  to  his  Master  in  heaven,  if  he  fail  to  use  the 
means  to  avoid  disease,  and  to  keep  him  in  robust  health ; 
that  is,  if  he  fail  to  inform  himself  as  to  the  best  method  of 
accomplishing  such  results. 

The  most  terrible  of  all  spiritual  conditions,  as  well  as  the 
most  utterly  hopeless,  is  for  a  man  to  be  conscious  of  his  going 
to  perdition,  and  yet  to  feel  a  total  indifference  to  his  situa- 
tion, so  much  so,  as  to  be  incapable  of  making  any  effort  to 
escape  the  ruin.  Such  is  the  bodily  condition  of  many  per- 
sons ;  they  are  not  sufficiently  alive  to  their  situation  to  be 
stimulated  to  proper  efforts  for  their  deliverance  by  any 
appeals  to  duty,  —  whose  end  is  death ! 


442  THE  FEET  IN  WINTER-TIME. 


THE  FEET  IN   WINTER-TIME. 

No  person  can  be  well  long,  whose  feet  are  habitually  cold ; 
while,  securing  for  them  dry  ness  and  warmth,  is  the  certain 
means  of  removing  a  variety  of  annoying  ailments. 

The  feet  of  some  are  kept  more  comfortable  in  winter  ^if 
cotton  is  worn,  while  woollen  suits  others  better.  The  wise 
course,  therefore,  is,  for  each  one  to  observe  for  himself,  and 
act  accordingly. 

Scrupulous  cleanliness  is  essential  to  the  healthful  warmth 
of  the  feet ;  hence  all,  especially  those  who  walk  a  great  deal 
out  of  doors  during  the  day  in  cold  weather,  should  make  it  a 
point  to  dip  both  feet  in  cold  water  on  rising  every  morning, 
and  let  them  remain  half  ankle  deep,  for  half  a  minute  at  a 
time,  then  rub  and  wipe  dry,  dress  and  move  about  briskly  to 
warm  them  up.  To  such  as  cannot  well  adopt  this  course 
from  any  cause,  the  next  best  plan  is  to  wash  them  in  warm 
water  every  night  just  before  going  to  bed,  taking  the  pre- 
caution to  dry  them  by  the  fire  most  thoroughly  before 
retiring ;  this,  besides  keeping  the  feet  clean,  preserves  a 
natural  softness  to  the  skin,  and  has  a  tendency  to  prevent  and 
cure  corns.  Many  a  troublesome  throat  affection,  and  many 
an  annoying  headache,  will  be  cured  if  the  feet  are  kept  always 
clean,  warm,  soft,  and  dry. 

The  moment  the  feet  are  observed  to  be  cold,  the  person 
should  hold  them  to  the  fire,  with  the  stockings  off,  until  they 
feel  comfortably  warm.  One  of  the  several  decided  objec- 
tions to  a  furnace-heated  house,  is  the  want  of  a  place  to 
warm  the  feet,  the  registers  being  wholly  unsuited  for  that 
purpose.  Our  wealthy  citizens  do  themselves  and  their 
families  a  great  wrong  if  they  fail  to  have  one  room  in  the 
house,  free  for  all,  where  a  fire  is  kept  burning  from  the  first 
day  of  October  until  the  first  day  of  June,  on  a  low  grate,  on 
a  level  with  the  hearth,  after  the  pattern  of  Dixon,  of  Chest- 
nut Street,  Philadelphia  ;  for  the  closer  the  fire  is  to  the  hearth 
in  a  grate,  or  to  the  floor  in  a  stove,  the  more  comfortable  is 
it,  and  the  less  heat  is  wasted.  This  is  one  of  the  delights  of 
the  good  old-fashioned  wood  fires,  the  very  thought  of  which 


THE  BIRDS  OF  THE  WOOD.  443 

carries  so  many  of  us  away  to  the  glad  scenes  of  childhood 
and  early  homes.  It  ought  to  be  known  in  New  York,  where 
hard  or  anthracite  coal  is  burned,  that  with  one  of  the  grates 
named,  filled  with  hard  coal  and  a  few  pieces  of  Liverpool  or 
caunell  put  on  top,  nearly  all  the  advantages  of  a  wood  fire 
are  secured,  at  least  as  far  as  cheerfulness,  comfort,  and 
warmth  are  concerned. 

Some  feet  are  kept  cold  by  their  dampness  from  incessant 
perspiration  ;  in  such  cases  cork  soles  are  injurious,  because 
they  soon  become  saturated,  and  maintain  moisture  for  a  long 
time.  Soak  a  cork  in  water  for  a  day  or  two  and  see.  A 
better  plan  is  to  cut  a  piece  of  broadcloth  the  size  of  the  foot, 
baste  on  it  half  an  inch  thickness  of  curled  hair,  wear  it  inside 
the  stocking,  the  hair  touching  the  sole ;  remove  at  night,  and 
place  before  the  fire  to  dry,  until  morning.  The  hair  titillates 
the  skin,  thereby  warming  it  some,  and  conducts  the  damp- 
ness to  the  cloth. 

Scrupulous  cleanliness  of  feet  and  stockings,  with  hair  soles, 
are  the  best  means  known  to  us  of  keeping  the  feet  warm 
when  they  are  not  cold  from  decided  ill  health.  A  tight  shoe 
will  keep  the  feet  "  as  cold  as  ice,"  when  a  loose-fitting  one 
will  allow  them  to  be  comfortably  warm.  A  loose  woollen 
sock  over  a  loose  shoe  will  maintain  more  warmth  than  the 
thickest  soled  tight-fitting  boot.  Never  start  on  a  journey  in 
winter,  nor  any  other  time,  with  a  new  shoe. 


THE  BIRDS  OF  THE  WOOD. 

THE  true  uses  of  the  beautiful  are  to  happify  man  ;  hence  we 
shall  never  fail  to  find,  throughout  the  wide  empire  of  the 
beneficent  Father  of  us  all,  that  beauty  has  its  uses ;  or  if 
those  uses  are  not  known  to  us  now,  a  closer  observation  will 
discover  them.  Then  spare,  O,  spare,  the  beautiful  birds  of 
the  early  spring-time,  and  of  the  maturer  summer ;  for  while 
they  delight  us  with  their  sweet,  glad  twitterings,  they  per- 
form a  toil  all  day,  which  sturdy  man,  with  all  his  wisdom  and 
all  his  power,  would  be  wholly  inadequate  to  accomplish. 
Time  out  of  mind  have  we  been  told  that  the  birds  were  the 


444  ANAL  ITCHINQS. 

worst  enemies  of  the  hard-working  tiller  of  the  soil,  and  with 
that  impression,  millions  of  these  loving  warblers  have  been 
remorselessly,  yes,  gladly  destroyed.  But  not  long  ago,  a 
farmer,  as  observant  as  he  was  humane,  shot  a  yellow-bird  in 
his  field,  in  order  to  convince  a  neighbor  that  birds  were 
actually  useful  rather  than  destructive.  On  examining  its 
little  stomach,  they  found  it  contained  two  hundred  weevils 
and  only  four  grains  of  wheat.  Birds,  like  our  domestic  fowls, 
thrive  on  flesh,  and  are  the  voracious  destroyers  of  insects. 

But  as  sweetness  of  character  is  the  steady  attendant  of 
benevolence  in  men,  so  there  is  a  kindness  in  the  little  bosom 
of  the  feathered  songster,  which  well  accords  with  its  bonny 
plumage,  its  beautiful  voice,  and  its  sterner  utilities. 

The  correspondent  of  a  Washington  paper  relates,  that 
noticing  an  extraordinary  commotion  near  a  bird's  nest,  he 
found  that  a  mother-bird  had  been  caught  by  the  wing  among 
the  twigs  of  a  tree ;  her  cries  brought  others ;  and  when  her 
efforts  for  release  were  unavailing,  the  other  birds  flew  away, 
but  after  a  while  returned,  each  bearing  an  insect  of  some 
kind,  or  other  article  of  food,  in  its  bill ;  some  gave  to  the 
mother,  others  gave  to  her  half-grown  nestlings  near  by. 
When  the  gentleman  released  the  mother,  there  seemed  to  be 
a  universal  jubilation  for  a  short  time,  when  the  others  flew 
away,  and  the  mother-bird  nestled  among  her  young  ones. 

Who  that  reads  this  beautiful  incident  will  ever  hurt  a 
bird  again,  or  allow  children,  or  any  person  under  them, 
to  do  it? 

And  if  the  little  birds  thus  help  one  another  in  trouble,  let 
not  man,  with  his  high  relationship  to  angels,  ever  fail  in 
aiding  an  unfortunate  brother  in  his  sorrow,  in  his  poverty,  or 
in  the  hour  of  crushing  trial,  or  wasting  illness. 


ANAL  ITCHINGS. 

THIS  is  a  malady  which  is  never  referred  to,  except  in  pro- 
fessional works,  and  yet  it  is  an  ailment  which  gives  an  incred- 
ible amount  of  annoyance,  coming  on  as  it  does  on  retiring  to 
bed,  and  continuing  nightly  for  many  years,  making  sleep 


WINTER  RULES.  445 

impracticable,  sometimes  for  many  hours  together.  It  is 
sometimes  a  dyspeptic  symptom,  at  others,  it  arises  from  a 
multitude  of  small  worms  at  the  parts.  As  an  unprofessional 
man  is  not  likely  to  know  the  real  cause,  and  yet  may  not 
like  to  ask  for  advice,  strict  cleanliness  and  frequent  ablutions 
are  essential ;  then  regulate  the  diet,  living  mainly  on  cold 
bread,  fruits,  and  fresh  meats.  But  for  instantaneous  relief, 
inject  a  teaspoouful  of  camphor  water,  or  dip  the  fore-finger 
in  the  water,  and  apply  it.  One  or  two  applications  are  often 
sufficient. 

Or  apply,  twice  a  day,  an  ointment  made  of  sixty  grains  of 
calomel  and  a  heaping  teaspoonful  of  hog's  lard,  then  powder 
with  camphorated  starch,  made  by  mixing  intimately  a  dram 
of  camphor  with  four  drams  of  starch. 


WINTER  RULES. 

NEVER  go  to  bed  with  cold  or  damp  feet. 

In  going  into  a  colder  air,  keep  the  mouth  resolutely  closed, 
that  by  compelling  the  air  to  pass  circuitously  through  the 
nose  and  head,  it  may  become  warmed  before  it  reaches  the 
lungs,  and  thus  prevent  those  shocks  and  sudden  chills  which 
frequently  end  in  pleurisy,  pneumonia,  and  other  serious 
forms  of  disease. 

Never  sleep  with  the  head  in  the  draught  of  an  open  door  or 
window. 

Let  more  cover  be  on  the  lower  limbs  than  on  the  body. 
Have  an  extra  covering  within  easy  reach  in  case  of  a  sudden 
and  great  change  of  weather  during  the  night. 

Never  stand  still  a  moment  out  of  doors,  especially  at  street 
corners,  after  having  walked  even  a  short  distance. 

Never  ride  near  the  open  window  of  a  vehicle  for  a  single 
half  minute,  especially  if  it  has  been  preceded  by  a  walk ; 
valuable  lives  have  thus  been  lost,  or  good  health  permanently 
destroyed. 

Never  put  on  a  new  boot  or  shoe  in  beginning  a  journey. 

Never  wear  India-rubbers  in  cold,  dry  weather. 

If  compelled  to  face  a  bitter  cold  wind,  throw  a  silk  hand- 


446  WATS   TO  DRUNKENNESS. 

kerchief  over  the  face :  its  agency  is  wonderful  in  modifying 
the  cold. 

Those  who  are  easily  chilled  on  going  out  of  doors,  should 
have  some  cotton  batting  attached  to  the  vest  or  other  gar- 
ment, so  as  to  protect  the  space  between  the  shoulder-blades 
behind,  the  lungs  being  attached  to  the  body  at  that  point ; 
a  little  there  is  worth  five  times  the  amount  over  the  chest  in 
front. 

Never  sit  for  more  than  a  minute  at  a  time  with  the  back 
against  the  fire  or  stove. 

Avoid  sitting  against  cushions  in  the  backs  of  pews  in 
churches ;  if  the  uncovered  board  feels  cold,  sit  erect  with- 
out touching  it. 

Never  begin  a  journey  until  breakfast  has  been  eaten. 

After  speaking,  singing,  or  preaching  in  a  warm  room  in 
winter,  do  not  leave  it  for  at  least  ten  minutes,  and  even  then 
close  the  mouth,  put  on  the  gloves,  wrap  up  the  neck,  and  put 
on  cloak  or  overcoat  before  passing  out  of  the  door;  the 
neglect  of  these  has  laid  many  a  good  and  useful  man  in  a 
premature  grave. 

Never  speak  under  a  hoarseness,  especially  if  it  requires  an 
effort,  or  gives  a  hurting  or  a  painful  feeling,  for  it  often 
results  in  a  permanent  loss  of  voice,  or  life-long  invalidism. 


WAYS  TO  DRUNKENNESS. 

A  BEAUTIFUL  Knickerbocker  custom  is  it  for  a  gentleman 
on  New  Year's  Day  to  call  on  his  lady  acquaintances  as  a  token 
of  respectful  remembrance,  intimating  thereby  that  he  desires 
this  acquaintance  to  be  continued,  and  he  judges  from  the 
manner  of  his  reception  whether  such  a  continuance  would  be 
agreeable  or  not.  Some  ladies  vouchsafe  the  pleasurable  cer- 
tainty by  returning  the  call,  the  next  day,  to  those  whom  they 
specially  desire  to  remain  their  recognized  friends. 

With  this  commendable  custom  has  grown  up  a  usage  of 
questionable  expediency,  that  of  having  a  table  spread  with 
various  delicacies  —  wines,  cordials,  and  brandies  being  con- 
sidered by  some  as  indispensables.  The  result  being,  that  in 


WATS  TO  DRUNKENNESS.  447 

the  joyousness  of  the  interview,  not  lasting,  generally,  over 
two  or  three  minutes,  a  sip  is  taken  of  this,  that,  and  the 
other,  and  being  repeated  at  every  dwelling,  gentlemen,  ere 
they  are  aware  of  it,  find  themselves  unmistakably  drunk,  and 
the  Rubicon  once  crossed,  the  ice  once  broken,  the  morale 
once  lost,  life  ends  in  the  gutter. 

Seeing  these  objections,  some  thoughtful  persons  have  for 
years  removed  the  wine-cup,  and  replaced  it  with  coffee, 
lemonade,  or  pure  cold  water,  the  eatables  remaining  the 
same.  Let  every  mother  who  has  a  son  who  might  be  mis- 
led, be  equally  considerate ;  and  if  she  have  not  a  son  herself, 
let  her  remember  that  some  other  sister  woman  has  a  son  to 
be  lost  or  saved,  and  act  accordingly. 

Aside  from  this  objection,  the  custom  is  a  beautiful  one, 
beautiful  morally,  beautiful  socially,  especially  in  large  cities, 
where  the  press  of  duties  and  the  rush  of  business  insensibly 
defer  intended  calls  on  prized  friends  until  weeks  and  mouths 
have  passed  away,  when  the  shame  of  the  delinquency  comes 
in,  excuses  are  framed,  and  finally  it  is  concluded  the  interval 
has  been  so  long  that  the  acquaintance  may  as  well  be  dropped, 
and  the  parties  meet  indifferently  ever  after.  But  when  a  day 
in  a  }rear  is  fixed  by  common  consent  for  "adjusting  these  ar- 
rearages," for  making  out  a  list  of  pleasant  faces  whose  remem- 
brance it  is  not  wished  should  pass  away,  the  very  work  of 
casting  about  for  the  names  of  the  prized  has  a  sweetness 
about  it  which  of  itself  is  worth  much. 

But  when  a  lady  lays  her  head  on  her  pillow  on  New  Year's 
night,  the  gladness  of  the  day  is  very  liable  to  be  followed  with 
recollections  which  are  painfully  sad.  Some  faces  she  ex- 
pected to  see  did  not  present  themselves  ;  a  year  before,  how 
merry  they  were,  how  joyous  was  the  greeting  !  But  one  has 
removed  to  a  distant  part  of  the  country  ;  to  another,  reverses 
have  come,  pecuniary  or  social ;  a  third  has  gone  upon  the 
returnless  journey ;  while  here  and  there  one  is  found  who 
has  chosen  to  drop  the  acquaintance  without  any  assignable 
reason. 

Then  there  are  maiden  ladies,  who,  some  years  ago,  num- 
bered their  callers  by  dozens  and  scores,  and  even  hundreds  ; 
but  for  a  few  years  past  they  have  fallen  off  in  geometrical 
progression,  and  now  the  diminution  is  really  frightful. 


448  WATS    TO   DRUNKENNESS. 

Formerly,  when  youth  and  beauty  were  theirs,  the  door-bell 
began  to  tingle  as  soon  as  the  clock  struck  nine  of  the  morn- 
ing, with  scarcely  an  intermission  until  it  verged  towards  mid- 
night. But  now  how  great  the  change  I  Merry  voices  are 
heard  outside,  but  they  do  not  greet  their  ears  ;  brisk  footfalls 
sound  on  the  pavement,  but  they  do  not  stop  at  their  doors  ; 
and  a  weary  forenoon  has  almost  passed  away,  with  only  one 
or  two  visitors  to  break  the  disturbing  monotony,  and  former 
visions  begin  to  assume  more  tangible  shapes,  and  the  em- 
bodied idea  stands  put  in  high  relief — Passed 

But  yonder  comes  a  poor  unfortunate  bachelor ;  his  hat  is 
faultlessly  sleek,  as  faultlessly  shine  his  boots.  Cristadoro 
has  supplied  him  with  one  of  his  most  natural  wigs,  and  to  the 
whiskers  Phalon  has  imparted  the  deepest,  glossiest  black. 
Allen  has  given  him  teeth,  whose  perfection  of  finish  vies  with 
Dame  Nature  herself;  in  fact,  at  a  short  distance,  the  man  is 
without  a  fault ;  but,  on  a  nearer  view,  it  is  seen  that  youth 
has  fled  from  the  face  ;  the  eye  is  no  more  joyous  ;  the  nimble 
step,  the  supple  joint,  the  rollicking  air,  all  are  gone,  and  as 
for  the  poor  heart,  why,  there  is  nothing  in  it  I  it  is  as  hollow 
as  his  head  ;  for  in  the  heyday  of  youth,  when  he  had  his  pick 
and  choice  of  a  hundred,  he  was  soft  enough  to  imagine  that 
he  was  entitled  to  a  piece  of  perfection ;  and  while  he  was 
looking  around  for  it,  this  one,  whom  he  thought  almost  so, 
was  caught  up  by  a  wiser  man ;  then  the  second  best,  and  the 
third  best,  and  so  on,  until  the  remnant  were  so  common,  in 
his  judgment,  that  he  went  off  on  other  explorations,  where 
the  same  fatality  followed  him,  and  now  he  has  come  back  to  the 
old  stamping-ground,  confident  that  he  will  receive  the  greet- 
ings as  of  yore.  But  he  has  got  old  in  the  mean  time,  changes 
have  come,  new  names  are  on  the  doors,  and  if  now  and  then 
the  name  is  the  same,  the  once  merry  occupant  has  mated  with 
another,  and  anon  his  face  becomes  a  mile  long ;  the  corners 
of  his  lips  are  turned  downward ;  in  his  meditations  he  has 
forgotten  the  day  and  the  occasion  ;  he  walks  along,  a  veritable 
"abstraction,"  and,  when  too  late,  soliloquizes  in  reality,  — 

"  I  feel  like  one  who  treads  alone 
Some  banquet-hall  deserted; 
Whose  lights  are  fled,  whose  garlands  dead, 
And  all  but  me  departed." 


HOMINY.  449 

Let  it  be  then  the  wisdom  of  the  reader,  whether  man  or 
woman,  if  as  yet  unmated,  to  resolve  that  the  first  day  of 
January,  eighteen  hundred  and  seventy,  shall  be  the  last  New 
Year's  which  shall  find  them  out  of  the  bonds  of  steadying  and 
happifying  wedlock ;  for  out  of  it  there  is  no  pure  enjoyment, 
while  in  it  there  is  bliss  or  —  otherwise  I  according  to  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  and  the  wisdom  of  the  parties.  But, 
inasmuch  as  out  of  wedlock  there  is  no  rest,  and  much  that  is 
calculated  to  wilt  and  wither  the  finer  feelings  of  our  nature, 
while  in  married  life  there  is,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  aggre- 
gate, a  world  of  enjoyment  in  cherishing  the  highest  and  most 
refining  qualities  of  the  human  heart,  it  is  wise  to  wed. 


HOMINY. 

WHEN  that  kind  of  Indian  corn  called  "  flint  corn  "  is  broken 
into  three  or  four  pieces  with  a  wooden  pestle,  as  is  done  in 
the  West  and  South-west,  it  is  called  hominy.  The  outer  skin, 
which  answers  to  the  "bran"  in  grinding  wheat,  is  removed 
by  steeping  or  boiling  it  in  the  ley  of  wood  ashes.  In  the 
North,  this  corn,  broken  coarsely,  is  called  "  samp,"  while  that 
which  is  denominated  "  samp,"  in  the  South,  is  the  same  corn 
prepared  in  such  a  way  that  each  particle,  as  it  appears  on  the 
table,  is  not  larger  than  a  grain  of  rice,  and  is  quite  as  white, 
but  it  has  not  the  juiciness  and  sweetness  of  the  coarser  prep- 
aration. 

Next  to  the  common  white  bean,  hominy  is  the  most  nutri- 
tious, the  most  economical,  and  the  most  healthful  article  of 
vegetable  growth  which  can  be  placed  on  our  tables.  The 
usual  mode  of  preparing  it  is  to  cover  it  an  inch  deep  with 
water  over  night,  and  let  it  soak  until  the  morning ;  then  boil 
it  slowly  and  steadily  six,  eight,  or  ten  hours,  until  it  is  quite 
soft  enough  for  being  eaten  easily.  After  it  has  thus  been 
boiled,  a  part  of  it  may  be  taken,  prepared  with  a  little  milk 
and  butter,  and  placed  on  the  table,  to  be  eaten  as  a  vegetable, 
or  with  syrup  or  loaf-sugar,  as  a  dessert.  The  portion  laid 
away  can  be  cut  in  slices,  about  half  an  inch  thick,  and  fried 
brown  for  breakfast,  with  or  without  the  addition  of  syrup ;  or 


450  THE  VICTIM. 

it  may  be  warmed  up  just  as  it  is,  or,  with  a  little  milk,  or  a 
tablespoonful  or  two  in  a  bowl  of  good  milk,  will,  of  itself, 
make  a  sufficient  meal.  A  bowl  of  milk  and  hominy,  thus 
prepared,  would  make  a  sustaining  and  healthful  dinner  for  a 
day  laborer.  If  prepared  fresh  every  day,  it  can  be  taken  for 
weeks  together  with  an  appetite  and  a  relish,  while  it  is,  per- 
haps, not  inferior  to  cracked  wheat  as  an  agency  in  the  health- 
ful regulation  of  the  system. 


THE  VICTIM. 

SHE  was  just  eighteen,  the  only  child  of  a  retired  merchant. 
Never  was  there  a  more  indulgent  father,  never  a  more  dot- 
ing mother.  That  father  had  spent  thirty  long  years  bending 
over  his  desk.  How  sedulously  had  he  made  every  entry ! 
How  late  in  the  night  of  every  day  was  it  that  he  found  him- 
self running  over  his  "blotter,"  to  see  if  he  had  forgotten  an 
item  !  How,  to  the  latest  verge  of  conscience,  had  he  gone 
every  Saturday  night  over  the  balance-sheets.  How,  through 
wind  and  rain  and  storm  and  snow,  he  had  regularly  "gone 
on  "  to  purchase  goods  twice  a  year  !  How  many  heartaches 
he  had  endured  in  that  "  age  "  of  business,  in  the  failure  of 
customers  to  "pay  up,"  in  their  questioning  the  correctness 
of  some  of  the  entries,  in  listening  to  interminable  excuses 
for  want  of  promptness.  How  often  did  it  happen,  when, 
after  having  done  all  that  he  could  possibly  do  to  "  meet  his 
own  notes,"  the  announcement  was  made,  just  before  the 
clock  struck  "  three,"  that  he  must  "  take  up  "  a  customer's 
paper,  on  the  faith  of  which  he  had  obtained  a  "  discount," 
or  go  to  protest?  How  many  nights  he  had  slept  not  a  wink, 
in  the  apprehension  that  he  might  not  be  able  to  meet  the 
"  calls  "  of  the  coming  day  ?  How  many  times  he  had  come 
home  at  nightfall  more  dead  than  alive,  hungry,  tired,  dis- 
pirited, and  sad,  soliloquizing,  "  What's  the  use  of  all  this?" 
and  yet,  turning  his  eye  on  his  patient,  quiet,  beautiful  wife, 
and  the  more  beautiful  blossom  which  nestled  by  her  side, 
would  find  a  new  inspiration  in  the  thought :  "  It's  not  for  me, 
—  it's  for  these  ! 


THE   VICTIM.  451 

How  many  times  such  things  occurred  in  the  course  of  that 
thirty  years  of  mercantile  life,  none  can  say  ;  the  number  was, 
doubtless,  large,  very  large.  But  the  sun  of  prosperity  shone 
in  a  cloudless  sky.  Money  multiplied  on  itself;  and,  at  the 
age  of  fifty-eight,  he  found  himself  a  rich  man,  retired  from 
business,  the  owner  of  a  splendid  mansion,  the  husband  of  as 
good  a  wife,  the  father  of  as  sweet  a  child,  as  any  reasonable 
man  could  wish  to  have.  On  the  second  day  of  June,  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-eight,  we  were  consulted  as  to  the  health  of 
that  daughter.  She  was  at  school  in  a  distant  city.  The 
"  examination  "  was  coming  on.  She  had  maintained  a  high 
position  in  school.  Hers  was  the  glory  of  being  at  the  "head 
of  her  class."  Her  ambition  was  to  maintain  that  position  to 
the  end.  On  inquiry,  it  appeared  that  she  was  so  much  "  in- 
terested in  her  studies,"  that  she  would  not  give  any  time  to 
recreation.  She  would  even  take  her  food  in  her  hands, 
hurry  off  to  school,  eating  and  studying  on  the  way.  The 
moment  she  returned  from  school  her  face  was  buried  in  her 
books  ;  and  thus  it  had  been  for  weeks,  months,  may  be  years. 
Great  nature  never  allows  an  outrage  against  herself  to  be 
committed  with  impunity ;  neither  youth,  nor  beauty,  nor 
position,  nor  gold,  ever  bribed  her ;  her  laws  are  as  immutable 
as  adamant.  The  danger  appeared  imminent.  It  was  coun- 
selled to  abandon  school ;  but,  as  this  was  not  assented  to,  we 
declined  special  advice.  It  was  intimated,  that,  when  the  ex- 
amination was  over  (and  it  would  only  be  a  few  weeks),  she 
could  give  full  attention  to  herself.  Not  having  seen  her,  we 
hoped  that  our  fears  were  exaggerated.  Still  we  felt  as  if 
every  book  had  better  be  thrown  in  the  fire ;  that  not  one 
single  day  should  be  allowed  to  be  passed  in  a  school-room, 
not  an  hour  in  study ;  that  every  moment  in  the  beauteous 
outdoors  was  a  treasure  to  her,  and  that  the  early  morning 
and  the  later  evening  should  find  her  in  the  saddle,  scouring 

*— '  O 

the  hills  of  her  own  beautiful  New  England.  Only  a  few 
weeks  !  Why,  it  seemed  to  us,  in  its  necessities,  to  be  a 
million  years'  duration,  — in  fact,  an  interminable  time,  irre- 
deemable ! 

But  she  was  anxious  to  graduate  with  honor.  Parental 
kindness  overreached  itself.  Moral  firmness  was  wanting. 
And  the  school  kept  on.  She  graduated  with  great  honor,. 


452  SUCCESSFUL   MEN. 

and  in  the  following  June  she  died.  The  desolation  of  that 
household  was  immeasurable.  "I  see  my  error  now,"  said 
the  stricken  father. 

How  many  of  our  readers  will  take  warning  from  this  un- 
varnished narration  of  facts,  and  look  with  horror  on  those 
murderous  stimulations  of  pride  and  ambition  which  are  prac- 
tised at  almost  all  our  schools  ?  Practised  always,  to  show  off 
the  teachers,  without  ever  bringing  one  single  benefit  to  the 
child.  The  price  we  pay  for  the  education  of  our  sons  and 
daughters  is,  in  ten  thousand  instances,  the  price  of  blood, 
paid  for  by  the  blasting  of  the  hopes  of  a  lifetime  ;  the  penalty, 
—  an  age  of  desolation,  a  going  down  to  the  grave  in  an  aw- 
ful loneliness  ;  for  it  is  not  merely  to  be  alone,  but  the  being 
attended  with  a  remorse  which  death  only  can  wipe  out. 

The  victims  to  ill-advised  applications  at  school,  and  acad- 
emy, and  college,  and  seminary,  are  numberless.  Not,  in- 
deed, the  applications  themselves,  but  the  injudicious  habits 
and  modes  of  life  in  connection  with  them. 

We  are  all  too  much  in  a  hurry  to  have  our  children  gradu- 
ate ;  to  hasten  their  studies  ;  to  expedite  their  entrance  on 
professional  life,  with  the  result  of  an  utter  failure ;  or,  if  the 
professional  goal  is  reached,  let  the  experience  of  the  myriads 
of  sufferers  from  various  forms  of  disease  testify,  which  tor- 
ture the  body  and  harass  the  mind  for  the  remainder  of  life, 
making  it  a  martyrdom,  instead  of  a  glory,  a  gladness,  and 
an  enduring  joy. 


SUCCESSFUL    MEN. 

Wno  are  they?  They  are  those  who,  when  boys,  were 
compelled  to  work,  either  to  help  themselves  or  their  parents  ; 
and  who,  when  a  little  older,  were  under  the  stern  necessity 
of  doing  more  than  their  legitimate  share  of  labor;  who,  as 
young  men,  had  their  wits  sharpened  by  having  to  devise 
ways  and  means  of  making  their  time  more  available  than  it 
would  have  been  under  ordinary  circumstances.  Hence,  in 
reading  the  lives  of  men  who  have  greatly  distinguished  them- 
selves, we  find  their  whole  youth  passed  in  self-denials  of 
food,  and  rest,  and  sleep,  and  recreation.  They  sat  up  late, 


SUCCESSFUL  MEN.  453 

and  rose  early  to  the  performance  of  imperative  duties  ;  doing, 
by  daylight,  the  work  of  one  man,  and,  by  night,  the  work 
of  another. 

Said  a  gentleman,  the  other  day,  now  n  private  banker  of 
high  integrity,  and  whom  we  knew  had  started  in  life  without 
a  dollar,  "For  years  together  I  was  in  my  place  of  business  ut 
sunrise,  and  often  did  not  leave  it  for  fifteen  and  eighteen 
hours." 

Let  not,  therefore,  any  youth  be  discouraged,  if  he  has  to 
make  his  own  living,  or  even  to  support,  besides,  a  widowed 
mother,  or  sick  sister,  or  unfortunate  relation ;  for  this  has 
been  the  road  to  eminence  of  many  a  proud  name.  This  is 
the  path  which  printers  and  teachers  have  often  trod,  — thorny 
enough  at  times,  at  others  so  beset  with  obstacles  as  to  be  al- 
most impassable,  —  but  the  way  has  cleared,  sunshine  came, 
success  followed,  then  the  glory  and  renown ! 

A  young  man  writes  us,  "  I  am  a  humble  school-teacher ; 
with  the  duties  belonging  to  half  a  hundred  pupils,  I  issue  a 
monthly  printed  nine  miles  away,  and  do  all  the  folding, 
stitching,  binding,  and  mailing,  of  three  thousand  copies,  with 
a  deep  feeling  that  good  may  be  done.  I  hope  I  will  succeed." 

Certainly  he  will  succeed  !  For  he  has  the  two  great  ele- 
ments of  success,  —  a  will  to  work,  and  a  heart  in  the  right 
place,  —  a  heart,  whose  object  is  not  glory,  but  good. 

But  too  often  has  it  happened  that  there  conies  in,  between 
the  manly  effort  and  a  glorious  fruition,  disease,  crippling  the 
body,  depressing  the  mind,  and  wasting  and  wearing  away 
the  whole  man.  Who  does  not  remember  grand  intellects, 
which  have  gone  down  in  the  night  of  a  premature  grave? 
Who  has  not  seen  young  men,  with  magnificent  minds,  stand- 
ing on  the  borders,  looking  wistfully  —  O,  how  wistfully  !  — 
over,  but  unable  to  "go  in  and  possess  the  land,"  only  for  the 
want  of  bodily  health?  A  health,  by  no  means  wanting 
originally,  but  sacrificed  —  pitilessly,  remorselessly  sacrificed 
—  by  inattention  and  sheer  ignorance  ;  learned  in  everything 
else ;  critically  informed  in  everything  else ;  perfect  masters 
of  everything  else,  except  the  knowledge  of  a  few  general 
principles  as  to  the  care  of  the  body,  —  principles  which 
could  be  perfectly  mastered,  in  any  twenty-four  hours,  by  a 
mind  accustomed  to  think. 


454  LAUGHTER  AND  MUSIC. 

Within  a  few  months  two  men  have  died  in  the  very  prime 
and  vigor  of  mental  manhood,  being  not  far  from  fifty,  —  one, 
the  first  scholar  of  his  time  ;  the  other,  one  of  the  very  best 
and  most  useful  men  of  the  age ;  both  of  them  the  victims  of 
wrong  habits  of  life,  —  habits  framed  in  youth,  and  utterly  re- 
pugnant to  the  commonest  dictates  of  common  sense.  Some 
of  the  most  useful  rules  for  the  preservation  of  the  health  of 
the  young,  while  obtaining  an  education,  are  these  :  — 

1.  Keep  the  feet  always  dry  and  warm. 

2.  Eat  thrice  a  day,  at  regular  times  ;  not  an  atom  between 
meals  ;  taking  for  supper  only  a  piece  of  cold  bread  and  but- 
ter, with  a  single  cup  of  any  warm  drink. 

3.  Go  to  bed  not  later  than  ten  o'clock ;  and  never  remain 
there  longer  than  eight  hours  at  farthest,  not  sleeping  a  mo- 
ment in  the  daytime. 

4.  Cool  off  with  the  utmost  slowness  after  all  forms  of 
exercise,  never  allowing  an  instant's  exposure  to  the  slight- 
est draught  of  air  while  in  a  state  of  rest  after  that  exer- 
cise. 

5.  If  the  bowels  fail  of  acting  daily,  at  the  regular  hour, 
eat  not  an  atom  until  they  do,  but  drink  all  that  is  desired, 
and  give  more  time  than  usual  to  outdoor  exercise  for  several 
days. 

These  five  rules  can  easily  be  remembered  ;  and  we  appeal 
to  the  educated  physicians  of  all  lands  for  confirmation  of  the 
truth  of  the  sentiment,  that  a  judicious  habitual  attention  to 
them  is  essential  to  the  preservation  of  sound  health,  and  the 
maintenance  of  a  good  constitution,  the  world  over.  Their 
proper  observance  would  add  a  young  lifetime  to  the  average 
age  of  man. 


LAUGHTER  AND   MUSIC. 

LAUGHTER  and  music  are  alike  in  many  points,  —  both  open 
the  heart,  wake  up  the  affections,  elevate  our  natures.  Laugh- 
ter ennobles,  for  it  speaks  forgiveness  ;  music  does  the  same, 
by  the  purifying  influences  which  it  exerts  on  the  better  feel- 
ings and  sentiments  of  our  being.  Laughter  banishes  gloom  ; 
music,  —  madness.  It  was  the  harp  in  the  hands  of  the  son 


AVERTING  DISEASE.  455 

of  Jesse,  which  exorcised  the  evil  spirit  from  royalty  ;  and  the 
heart  that  can  laugh  outright  does  not  harbor  treasons,  strata- 
gems, and  spoils. 

Cultivate  music,  then ;  put  no  restraint  upon  a  joyous  na- 
ture ;  let  it  grow  and  expand  by  what  it  feeds  upon,  and  thus 
stamp  the  countenance  with  gladness,  and  the  heart  with  the 
impress  of  a  diviner  nature,  by  feeding  it  on  that  "  concord 
of  sweet  sounds,"  which  prevails  in  the  habitations  of  angels. 


AVERTING  DISEASE. 

THE  very  instant  the  scientific  engineer  observes  anything 
is  wrong  on  ship,  or  train,  or  engine,  he  cuts  off  the  supply  of 
steam  ;  so  the  very  moment  there  is  any  sensation  about  the 
body  sufficiently  decided  to  attract  the  attention  unpleasantly, 
that  very  moment  should  all  supply  of  food  be  cut  off;  not  an 
atom  should  be  swallowed,  at  least  until  there  has  been  time 
to  ascertain  the  nature  of  the  trouble. 

If  cutting  off  the  supply  of  steam  is  not  adequate  to  the 
rectification  of  the  mischief,  the  next  step  taken  is  to  work  off 
the  steam  already  generated  ;  so,  if  abstinence  from  food  is  not 
sufficient  to  remove  a  given  symptom  or  ailment,  means  should 
be  taken  to  diminish  the  amount  of  that  which  the  food  pre- 
viously eaten  has  made,  that  is,  blood,  including  waste. 

Pain  is  a  blessing ;  it  is  the  great  life-preserver ;  it  is  the 
sleepless,  faithful  sentinel  which  gives  prompt  warning  that 
harm  is  being,  done.  All  pain  is  experienced  through  the 
nerves ;  they  telegraph  it  to  the  brain,  and  there  the  mind 
takes  note  of  it.  Pain  is  the  result  of  pressure  on  or  against 
a  nerve ;  that  pressure  is  made  by  a  blood-vessel,  for  there  is 
no  nerve  without  a  blood-vessel  in  close  proximity.  A  blood- 
vessel is  distensible,  like  an  India-rubber  life-preserver  —  both 
may  be  full  and  yet  may  be  fuller.  In  health  each  blood- 
vessel is  moderately  full ;  but  the  very  moment  disease,  or 
harm,  or  violence,  by  blow  or  cut,  or  otherwise,  conies  to  any 
part  of  the  body,  nature  becomes  alarmed,  as  it  were,  and 
sends  more  blood  there  to  repair  the  injury  —  much  more 
than  is  usually  required ;  that  additional  quantity  distends  the 


456  AVERTING  DISEASE. 

blood-vessels,  and  gives  disquiet  or  actual  pain.  In  these 
cases  this  increased  quantity  of  blood  is  called  "  inflammation  ; " 
and  if  there  is  not  this  increased  flow  to  the  injured  part,  there 
is  no  healing,  and  that  part  dies,  unless  some  stimulating 
application  is  made. 

But  pain  comes  in  another  way.  If  a  man  eats  too  much, 
or  is  constipated,  or  by  some  other  means  makes  his  blood 
impure,  it  becomes  thickened  thereby,  and  does  not  flow 
through  its  channels  as  freely  as  it  should ;  hence  it  ac- 
cumulates, dams  up,  congests,  distending  the  veins,  which  in 
their  turn  make  pressure  on  some  adjoining  nerve,  and  give 
dull  pain.  This  congestion  in  the  arteries  gives  a  sharp  or 
pricking  pain. 

Pain,  then,  is  the  result  of  more  blood  being  determined  to 
the  part  where  that  pain  is,  than  naturally  belongs  to  it.  The 
evident  alternative  is  to  diminish  the  quantity  of  blood,  either 
at  the  point  of  ailment  or  in  the  body  in  general.  Thus  it  ia 
that  a  mustard  plaster  applied  near  a  painful  spot,  by  with- 
drawing the  blood  to  itself,  gives  instantaneous  relief.  Open- 
ing a  vein  will  do  the  same  thing ;  and  so,  but  not  as  ex- 
peditiously,  will  any  purgative  medicine,  because  that  by  all 
these  things,  by  diminishing  the  amount  of  fluid  as  to  the 
whole  body,  each  particular  part  is  proportionably  relieved. 
On  the  same  principle  is  it  that  a  "  good  sweat  "  is  ''  good  "  for 
any  pain,  and  affords  more  or  less  relief.  Friction  does  the 
the  same,  even  if  it  is  performed  with  so  soft  a  thing  as  the 
human  hand,  for  any  rubbing  reddens,  that  is,  attracts  blood 
to  the  part  rubbed,  and  thus  diminishes  the  amount  of  pain  at 
the  spot  where  there  is  too  much  blood. 

But  the  safer,  more  certain  and  durable  method  of  relieving 
pain  is  to  do  it  in  a  natural  way,  without  the  violence  of  the 
lancet,  or  the  blister-plaster,  or  the  purgative ;  and  that  is,  by 
diminishing  the  amount  of  blood  in  the  body,  by  cutting  off 
the  supply  of  its  manufacture.  The  blood  is  made  out  of  the 
food  we  eat,  and  it  is  just  as  easy  to  make  a  world  out  of 
nothing  as  to  make  more  blood  in  the  body  without  eating 
more.  Ceasing  to  eat  would  be  of  itself  a  negative  remedy  — 
its  only  effect  would  be  not  to  increase  the  pain  ;  but  nature's 
forces  are  always  in  operation ;  she  is  constantly  engaged  in 
unloading  the  body  of  its  surplus  fluids  —  unloading  it  in  a 


AVERTING  DISEASE.  457 

million  places  at  the  same  time,  and  in  a  million  ways ;  every 
pore  of  the  skin,  at  every  instant  of  our  existence,  is  dis- 
charging its  portion  of  the  substance  of  the  body  in  the  shape 
of  insensible  perspiration  ;  and  besides  this,  every  breath  we 
breathe,  every  emotion  of  the  mind,  every  movement  of  a 
muscle,  down  to  the  crook  of  a  finger  or  wink  of  an  eye,  is 
at  the  expense  of  atoms  of  the  body ;  it  contains  less,  weighs 
less,  than  at  the  instant  before.  Thus  it  is,  that  if,  in  any 
pain,  we  instantly  stop  eating,  and  thus  stop  adding  to  the 
quantity  of  blood  already  in  the  body,  nature  will  perform 
the  other  part,  and  diminish  the  supply  every  instant.  So 
that  the  great  remedy  for  pain  is  to  lie  still,  wait  and  do 
nothing  —  the  very  course  which  blind  instinct,  by  the  wise 
and  loving  Father  of  us  all,  points  out  to  wounded  bird  and 
beast  and  creeping  thing,  and  they  get  well  amain. 

The  great  thing,  then,  to  do,  in  order  to  ward  off  serious 
disease  (and  sickness  never  comes  without  a  friendly  pre- 
monition in  the  distance,  only  that,  in  our  stupidity  or  heed- 
lessness,  we  often  fail  to  make  a  note  of  it) ,  is  simply  to  ob- 
serve three  things. 

1.  The  instant  we  become  conscious  of  any  unpleasant  sen- 
sation in  the  body,  cease  eating  absolutely. 

2.  Keep  warm. 

3.  Be  still. 

These  are  applicable  and  safe  in  all  cases ;  sometimes  a 
more  speedy  result  is  attained  if,  instead  of  being  quiet,  the 
patient  would,  by  moderate,  steady  exercise,  keep  up  a 
gentle  perspiration  for  several  hours.  And  an  observant 
person  will  seldom  fail  to  discover  that  he  who  relies  on  a 
judicious  abstinence  and  moderate  exercise  for  the  removal 
of  his  "symptoms,"  will  find  in  due  time,  in  multitudes  of 
cases,  that  the  remedy  will  become  more  and  more  ef- 
ficient, with  increasing  intervals  for  need  of  its  application, 
until  at  length  a  man  is  not  sick  at  all,  and  life  goes  out  like 
the  snuff  of  a  candle,  or  as  gently  as  the  dying  embers  on  the 
hearth. 


458  NEGLECTING   COLDS. 


NEGLECTING  COLDS. 

i 

EVERY  intelligent  physician  knows  that  the  best  possible 
method  of  promptly  curing  a  cold  is,  that  the  very  day  in 
which  it  is  observed  to  have  been  taken,  the  patient  should 
cease  absolutely  from  eating  a  particle  for  twenty-four  or 
forty-eight  hours,  and  should  be  strictly  confined  to  a  warm 
room,  or  be  covered  up  well  in  bed,  taking  freely  hot  drinks. 
It  is  also  in  the  experience  of  every  observant  person,  that 
when  a  cold  is  once  taken,  very  slight  causes,  indeed,  increase 
it.  The  expression,  "  It  is  nothing  but  a  cold,"  conveys  a 
practical  falsity  of  the  most  pernicious  character,  because  an 
experienced  medical  practitioner  feels  that  it  is  impossible  to 
tell,  in  any  given  case,  where  a  cold  will  end  ;  hence,  and  when 
highly  valuable  lives  are  at  stake,  his  solicitudes  appear  some- 
times to  others  to  verge  on  folly  or  ignorance.  A  striking 
and  most  instructive  example  of  these  statements  is  found  in 
the  case  of  Nicholas  the  First,  the  Emperor  of  all  the  Russias. 
For  more  than  a  year  before  his  death,  his  confidential  medical 
adviser  observed,  that,  in  consequence  of  the  Emperor  "  not 
giving  to  sleep  the  hours  needed  for  restoration,"  his  general 
vigor  was  declining,  and  that  exposures,  which  he  had  often 
encountered  with  impunity,  were  making  unfavorable  impres- 
sions on  the  system  —  that  he  had  less  power  of  resistance. 
At  length,  while  reviewing  his  troops  on  a  January  day,  he 
took  a  severe  cold,  which  at  once  excited  the  apprehensions 
of  his  watchful  physician,  who  advised  him  not  to  repeat  his 
review. 

"  Would  you  make  as  much  of  my  illness  if  I  were  a  com- 
mon soldier?  "  asked  the  Emperor,  in  a  tone  of  good-natured 
pleasantry. 

"  Certainly,  please  your  Majesty ;  we  would  not  allow  a 
common  soldier  to  leave  the  hospital  if  he  were  in  the  state  in 
which  your  Majesty  is." 

"  Well,  you  would  do  your  duty  —  I  will  do  mine  ;  "  and  the 
exposure  was  repeated,  with  the  result  of  greatly  increasing 
the  bad  effects  of  this  original  cold,  and  he  died  in  a  week 
afterwards. 


NEGLECTING  COLDS.  459 

It  is  not  the  weakness  of  a  few  great  men  to  transfer  their 
superiority  in  other  things  to  their  knowledge  of  health  and 
medicine.  The  self-reliant  or  self-opinionated  have  been  often 
heard  to  exclaim,  "  I  believe  I  know  about  as  much  as  the 
doctors.  A  doctor  don't  know  more  than  anybody  else." 
One  of  the  most  eminent  clergymen  of  his  sect  recently  died, 
learned  above  any  of  his  fellows,  could  write  and  converse  in 
some  half  a  dozen  languages.  An  intimate  friend  and  panegyr- 
ist said  of  him,  that  he  held  medical  science  in  a  kind  of  con- 
tempt, had  little  or  no  confidence  in  medicines  or  physicians. 
These  are  not  the  exact  words,  but  they  embody  the  impres- 
sion which  the  exact  words  would  make  on  ordinary  minds. 
The  result  was,  that  he  kept  ailments  to  himself  for  more  than 
a  year ;  ailments  whose  nature  is  to  go  on  steadily  and  become 
more  and  more  aggravated,  to  a  fatal  issue ;  but  which  judi- 
cious remedial  means  have  a  thousand  times  eradicated.  He 
died  in  the  very  prime  of  intellectual  manhood. 

The  pilot,  who  has  a  thousand  souls  aboard,  is  many  a  time 
almost  crazed  with  a  sense  of  his  responsibility,  when  he  is 
steering  his  vessel  over  dangerous  places,  while  the  pas- 
sengers themselves  see  nothing  but  uurippled  waters  and  the 
clear  blue  sky ;  at  the  same  time,  a  quarter's  turn  of  the 
wheel,  more  or  less,  would,  in  the  briefest  space,  send  them 
all  uuanuealed  and  unshriven  into  the  presence  of  their  Maker. 
Hence,  in  a  well-regulated  ship,  a  passenger  is  never  allowed 
to  address  a  word  to  the  man  who  is  at  the  wheel.  Thus  it  is 
with  an  intelligent  physician  ia  reference  to  his  patient,  and 
he  is  wise  who  will  read  the  lesson  well  by  remembering  that 
it  is  his  business  to  do  and  not  to  babble ;  for  the  people's 
ignorance  of  Nature,  and  her  operations  as  to  the  human  body, 
is  amazing  to  those  whose  stock  of  amusement  has  not  long 
ago  been  utterly  exhausted  in  the  contemplation  of  the  stupid- 
ities of  mankind. 


460  SPRING  DISEASES. 


SPRING  DISEASES. 

ANY  housekeeper  would  be  considered  demented  who  would 
keep  up  as  fierce  a  fire  on  the  hearth  in  the  spring  as  in  mid- 
winter. On  the  contrary,  as  the  days  grow  warmer,  less  and 
less  fuel  is  used,  until  the  fire  is  not  kindled  at  all.  One  of 
the  two  main  objects  of  eating  is  to  keep  the  body  warm ;  and 
it  need  not  be  argued  that  less  warmth  is  required  in  summer 
than  in  winter ;  but  if  we  eat  as  heartily  as  the  spring  ad- 
vances as  we  did  in  cold  weather,  we  will  burn  up  with  fever, 
because  we  have  made  too  much  heat.  The  instincts  of  our 
nature  are  perfectly  wonderful.  To  our  shame  is  it,  that  we 
not  only  do  not  heed  them,  but  oppose  them,  fight  against 
them  with  an  amazing  fatuity.  As  the  warm  weather  comes 
on,  we  are  all  conscious  of  a  diminution  of  appetite,  and  we 
either  begin  to  apprehend  we  are  about  to  get  sick,  or  set 
about  stimulating  ourselves  with  tonics,  and  bitters,  and 
various  kinds  of  teas,  with  a  view  to  purifying  the  blood.  How 
many  swills  of  sassafras  tea  has  the  reader  taken  to  that  end  ! 
No  such  purification  would  be  needed,  if  we  would  follow 
Nature's  instincts,  and  eat  only  with  the  inclination  she  gives 
us,  instead  of  taking  tonics  to  make  us  eat  more,  when  we 
actually  require  less. 

Observant  persons  have  noticed  that,  as  spring  comes  on, 
there  is  less  relish  for  meats  of  all  kinds,  and  we  yearn  for  the 
early  spring  vegetables,  the  "  greens,"  the  salads,  the  spinage, 
the  radishes,  and  the  like.  Why?  Just  look  at  it?  Meats 
have  more  than  fifty  per  cent,  of  carbon,  of  the  heat-forming 
principle.  Vegetables  and  berries  have  ten  per  cent.,  five  per 
cent.,  one  per  cent,  of  heat !  Potatoes  have  eleven  per  cent., 
turnips  three  per  cent.,  gooseberries  only  one. 

Literally  incalculable  are  the  good  results  which  would 
follow  a  practical  attention  to  these  facts.  Those  who  are  wise 
will  take  no  tonics  for  the  spring,  will  swallow  no  teas  to 
purify  the  blood,  nor  imagine  themselves  to  be  about  getting 
sick,  because  they  have  not  in  May  as  vigorous  an  appetite  as 
in  December ;  but  will  at  once  yield  themselves  to  the  guid- 
ance of  the  instincts,  and  eat  not  an  atom  more  than  they 


INFANTS  AND  AIR.  461 

have  an  inclination  for,  to  the  end  of  a  joyous  spring-time  and 
a  summer  of  glorious  health ;  while  those  who  will  eat,  who 
will  stimulate  the  stomach  with  tonics,  and  "  force  "  their  food, 
must  suffer  with  drowsiness,  depression,  and  distressing 
lassitude ;  and  while  all  nature  is  waking  up  to  gladness  and 
newness  of  life,  they  will  have  no  renovation,  and  no  well- 
springs  of  joyous  and  exuberant  health. 


INFANTS  AND  AIR. 

PARLIAMENTARY  returns  show  that,  of  twenty-eight  hundred 
infants  annually  sent  to  various  hospitals  to  be  taken  care  of, 
twenty-four  out  of  twenty-five  died  before  they  were  a  year 
old !  A  law  was  immediately  passed  that  they  should  be 
sent  to  the  country  thereafter,  when  it  was  found  that  only 
nine  of  twenty-five  died  the  first  year;  that  is,  instead  of 
twenty-six  hundred  and  ninety  dying,  there  were  only  four 
hundred  and  fifty,  a  difference  of  twenty-two  hundred  and 
forty. 

This  simple,  unvarnished  statement  of  an  indisputable  fact, 
ought  to  impress  the  mind  of  every  parent  deeply,  with  the 
importance  and  the  duty  of  using  all  practicable  means  for 
securing  to  children  the  habitual  breathing  of  the  purest  air 
possible :  being  careful  to  avoid  a  radical,  mischievous,  and 
most  prevalent  error,  that  warm  air  is  necessarily  impure. 
Warmth  is  as  essential  to  infantile  health  as  pure  air.  How 
best  to  secure  both,  should  be  our  constant  study.  There  are 
more  deaths  under  five  years  of  age,  in  cities  generally,  than 
there  are  from  five  to  sixty  years,  owing  to  three  things,  —  a 
want  of  pure  air,  of  suitable  warmth,  and  proper  food.  In 
these  three  wants  are  found  the  overwhelming  majority  of 
causes  for  the  fearful  statement  above  named.  Let  every 
parent  in  city  or  country,  in  hovel  or  mansion,  mature  these 
things. 

To  die  childless,  after  having  been  once  blessed  with  dear 
children,  must  be  one  of  the  most  terrible  of  all  calamities  of 
the  heart ;  yet,  in  countless  multitudes  of  cases,  the  sufferers 
are  the  authors  of  their  own  crushing  sorrows,  by  reason  of 
their  unpardonable  ignorance  or  more  criminal  neglect. 


462  GYMNASIUMS. 


GYMNASIUMS. 

WHAT  is  the  use  of  eating  like  a  pig,  and  then  have  to  work 
like  a  "  slave  "  to  get  rid  of  it,  or  explode  ?  The  best  gym- 
nasium is  a  wood-yard,  a  "clearing,"  or  a  cornfield.  There  is 
some  sense  in  these  things,  because  a  valuable  object  is  ac- 
complished by  the  efforts,  and  the  healthful  influence  of  the 
same  thrown  in,  thus  killing  two  birds  with  one  stone,  which 
is  Nature's  method  of  procedure  in  many  beautiful  instances. 
The  saliva,  the  tear-drop,  and  the  perspiration  lubricate  the 
mouth,  and  eye,  and  skin,  and,  at  the  same  time,  carry  out 
from  the  body  a  large  proportion  of  its  waste  and  impurity. 
The  breath  which  comes  from  the  lungs  is  so  loaded  down 
with  the  debris  of  the  system,  that,  if  inhaled  in  the  state  in 
which  it  leaves  the  body,  it  would  produce  instantaneous 
death ;  so  impure,  that,  if  kept  a  single  minute  longer  in  the 
lungs  than  ordinary,  we  fairly  gasp  for  life ;  and  yet  that 
same  foul  breath,  under  the  name  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  makes, 
in  its  outward  passage,  the  soft  whisper  from  beauty's  lips, 
the  ravishing  notes  of  delicious  music,  or  the  thunder-tones 
of  resistless  oratory. 

Suppose  a  fellow  learns  in  time,  and  by  labor  enough  to 
earn  a  small  farm,  to  climb  a  greased  pole  fifty  feet  high, 
what  is  he  to  do  when  he  gets  there  but  to  slide  back  in 
double-quick  time  to  the  place  he  started  from,  and  then  go 
about  his  business? 

What  if  he  can  jump  sky-high,  or  turn  a  dozen  somersets 
without  stopping,  or  lift  a  calf  bigger  than  himself,  or  hold, 
at  arms'  length,  for  two  or  ten  minutes,  a  heavier  weight  than 
his  own  soggy  head,  what  does  he  get  by  the  "  operation  "  ? 
We  hear  of  some  "doctor  "  going  about  the  country  lifting  up 
enormous  weights,  and  exhibiting  feats  of  strength  which 
make  a  practical  man  feel  what  a  pity  he  wasn't  employed  in 
felling  trees,  or  mauling  rails,  or  grubbing  potatoes.  It  is 
stated  that  he  has  lifted,  with  his  hands,  a  weight  of  one  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  thirty-six  pounds,  and  that  he  was 
sanguine,  in  twenty  days  more,  of  being  able  to  lift  twelve 
hundred  pounds.  The  more  he  can  prove  himself  to  lift,  the 


GYMNASIUMS.  463 

bigger  fool  he  is,  and  the  more  fit  for  an  asylum  ;  for  the  next 
thing  will  be  that  he  has  ruptured  a  blood-vessel,  and  then, 
for  the  remainder  of  life,  he  won't  be  able  to  earn  his  salt,  and 
somebody  will  have  to  support  him. 

Are  our  embryo  doctors,  and  lawyers,  and  clergymen,  go- 
ing to  make  Tom  Hyersand  Bill  Pooles  and  Yankee  Sullivans 
of  themselves?  Does  the  ability  of  a  jurist  depend  on  the 
amount  of  beef  he  carries?  Is  a  physician's  skill  to  be  deter- 
mined by  the  hardness  of  his  muscles?  Is  a  clergyman's 
efficiency  measured  by  the  agility  of  his  monkey  capers,  by 
his  dexterity  in  hanging  on  to  a  beam  by  his  hind-leg,  and 
swinging  up  to  touch  his  nose  against  the  big  toe  of  "  t'other 
foot?" 

A  man's  intellectuality  does  not  depend  on  the  amount  of 
brute  force  which  he  possesses.  It  does  not  require  a  giant's 
strength  to  write  a  sermon,  or  make  a  book,  or  "clear"  a 
thief,  or  feel  a  pulse.  Of  an  assembly  of  French  savans,  on  a 
certain  occasion,  Humboldt,  being-present,  was  found,  by  an 
accurate  mode  of  measurement,  to  have  the  least  muscular 
strength  of  the  whole  company,  of  which  he  was  the  greatest 
and  the  oldest.  Small  men,  fragile  men,  men  of  little  mus- 
cular vigor,  may  have  good  bodily  health,  and  among  such 
are  found  a  vast  excess  in  numbers  of  the  opposite  class,  and 
in  all  ages  and  countries,  who  are  the  brightest  of  the  world's 
bright  stars.  As  a  very  general  rule  it  holds  good,  — the 
bigger  the  man  the  bigger  the  fool  is  he.  Who  ever  saAv  a 
giant  who  was  remarkable  for  anything  beyond  the  size  of  his 
body ;  while  the  smallness  of  his  head,  and  the  little  that  is 
in  it,  is  a  notable  thing.  Both  body  and  brain  need  vital 
force ;  the  mind  is  great  in  proportion  as  that  vital  force  is 
expended  in  the  brain ;  but,  if  it  is  used  up  in  developing  the 
muscles,  the  brain  must  sutFer.  If  one  expects  to  make  his 
living  b}*  the  exercise  of  muscular  strength,  let  him,  as  a  boy 
and  a  youth,  develop  that  strength  by  steady  labor,  and  a 
regular  and  temperate  life  ;  if  it  is  his  wish  to  make  money  by 
legerdemain,  by  monkey  capers,  by  rope-walking,  by  mirac- 
ulous poises,  and  astonishing  feats  of  ground  and  lofty  tum- 
bling, then  the  gymnasium  is  a  very  proper  place  for  him, 
and  it  is  well  that  the  energies  of  the  system  should  be  ex- 
pended in  the  direction  of  the  muscles ;  but  if  he  aims  at  a 


464  THE  PANACEA. 

professional  life,  —  one  which  is  to  be  followed  as  a  means  of 
living,  —  he  must  exercise  the  mental,  not  the  muscular, 
powers;  to  the  brain,  not  to  the  beef,  must  the  energies  of 
the  system  be  sent,  in  order  that,  by  their  exercise,  the  brain 
may  be  developed,  and  the  mind  work  with  power. 

To  sedentary  persons,  violent,  sudden,  and  fitful  exercise 
is  always  injurious,  and  such  are  gymnastic  performances. 
Soldiers  die  early.  To-day,  they  are  doing  nothing ;  to-mor- 
row, the  forced  march,  the  terrible  battle,  summon  up  to  the 
very  dregs  the  employment  of  dormant  energies.  The  disa- 
bilities and  deaths  of  a  campaign  are  many  times  greater  by 
disease  than  by  the  bullet ;  for  shocks,  great  alternations,  al- 
ways cause  disease. 

The  exercise  of  the  student  should  be  regular,  gentle,  delib- 
erate, always  stopping  short  of  felt  fatigue.  One  hour's  joyous 
walk  with  a  cheerful  friend,  in  street,  or  field,  or  woodland,  will 
never  fail  to  do  a  greater  and  a  more  unmixed  good,  than 
double  the  time  in  the  most  scientifically  conducted  gymnasium 
in  the  world.  There  are  individual  cases  where  the  gymna- 
sium is  of  the  most  undeniable  benefit ;  but  the  masses  would 
be  the  better  for  having  nothing  to  do  with  them.  A  million 
times  better  recipe  than  the  gymnasium  for  sedentary  persons 
is, — 

Eat  moderately  and  regularly  of  plain,  nourishing  food, 
well  prepared. 

Spend  two  or  three  hours  every  day  in  the  open  air,  regard- 
less of  the  weather,  in  moderate,  untiring,  and  useful  ac- 
tivities. 


THE  PANACEA. 

THE  great  cure-all,  the  catholicon  for  the  removal  of  untold 
human  ills,  physical  and  mental,  which  will  make  of  life  a 
summer  sky,  which  will  replace  the  darkest  clouds  with  the 
gladdest  sunshine,  which  will  put  a  budding  rose  where  erst 
flourished  the  ragged  thorn,  is  the  blessed  habit  of  an  implicit 
reliance  on  the  wisdom  and  the  love  of  Providence  in  every 
occurrence  of  life  ;  of  humble  gratitude  if  it  is  gladsome  ;  of 
uncomplaining  resignation  if  it  is  adverse ;  abiding  in  the 


EARLY  BREAKFAST.  465 

firm  fuith,  that,  if  it  is  dark  to-day,  it  will  be  bright  to-mor- 
row ;  saying  and  feeling  of  every  dispensation,  "Not  as  I  will, 
but  as  Thou  wilt."  This  is  the  balm  of  Gilead  ;  this  is  peren- 
nial health  ;  it  is  happiness,  it  is  bliss. 


EARLY  BREAKFAST. 

BREAKFAST  should  be  eaten  in  the  morning,  before  leaving 
the  house  for  exercise,  or  labor  of  any  description ;  those  who 
do  it  will  be  able  to  perform  more  work  and  with  greater 
comfort  and  alacrity,  than  those  who  work  an  hour  or  two 
before  breakfast.  Besides  this,  the  average  duration  of  the 
life  of  those  who  take  breakfast  before  exercise  or  work, -will 
be  a  number  of  years  greater  than  of  those  who  do  otherwise. 
Most  persons  begin  to  feel  weak  after  having  been  engaged 
five  or  six  hours  in  their  ordinary  avocations  ;  a  good  meal  re- 
invigorates,  but  from  the  last  meal  of  the  day  until  next  morn- 
ing, there  is  an  interval  of  some  twelve  hours ;  hence,  the 
body,  in  a  sense,  is  weak,  the  stomach  is  weak,  and  in  propor- 
tion cannot  resist  deleterious  agencies,  whether  of  the  tierce 
cold  of  midwinter,  or  of  the  poisonous  miasm  which  rests  upon 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  wherever  the  sun  shines  on  a  blade 
of  vegetation  or  a  heap  of  offal.  This  miasm  is  more  solid, 
more  concentrated,  and  hence  more  malignant,  about  sunrise 
and  sunset,  than  at  any  other  hour  of  the  twenty-four,  be- 
cause the  cold  of  the  night  condenses  it,  and  it  is  on  the  first 
few  inches  above  the  soil  in  its  most  solid  form ;  but  as  the 
sun  rises,  it  warms  and  expands,  and  ascends  to  a  point  high 
enough  to  be  breathed,  and  being  taken  into  the  lungs  with 
the  air,  and  swallowed  with  the  saliva  into  the  stomach,  all 
weak  and  empty  as  it  is,  it  is  greedily  drank  in,  thrown  im- 
mediately into  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  carried  direct- 
ly to  every  part  of  the  bod}',  depositing  its  poisonous  influences 
at  the  very  fountain  head  of  life.  When  in  Cuba,  many  years 
ago,  we  observed  that  the  favorite  time  for  travel  was  mid- 
night ;  and  the  older  merchants  of  Charleston  may  remember 
that  when  deadly  fevers  prevailed  in  hot  weather,  they  dared 
not  ride  into  town  in  the  cool  of  the  morning  or  evening,  but 


466  THE  TEETH. 

midday  was  accounted  the  safest.  We  know,  from  many 
years'  living  in  New  Orleans,  that  it  was  when  the  evenings 
and  mornings  were  unusually  cool,  balmy,  and  delightful,  the 
citizens  prepared  themselves  for  still  greater  ravages  of  the 
deadly  epidemic  for  the  first  few  days  following. 

If  early  breakfast  was  taken,  in  regions  where  chill  and 
fever,  and  fever  and  ague,  prevail,  and  if,  in  addition,  a  brisk 
tire  were  kindled  in  the  family-room,  for  the  hour  including 
sunset  and  sunrise,  these  troublesome  maladies  would  diminish 
in  any  one  year,  not  tenfold,  but  a  thousand-fold,  because  the 
heat  of  the  fire  would  rarefy  the  miasmatic  air  instantly,  and 
send  it  above  the  breathing-point.  But  it  is  "  troublesome  " 
to  be  building  fires  night  and  morning  all  summer,  and  not 
one  in  a  thousand  who  reads  this  will  put  the  suggestion  into 
practice  ;  it  being  no  "trouble,"  requiring  no  effort,  to  shiver 
and  shake  by  the  hour,  daily,  for  weeks  and  months  together ; 
such  is  the  stupidity  of  the  animal,  man  ! 


THE    TEETH. 

SAID  Dr.  Ostrander  (at  the  head  of  his  profession  in  his 
own  State) ,  "  If  dentistry  had  reached  its  present  perfection 
when  I  was  a  young  man,  the  whole  tenor  of  my  life  would 
have  been  altered." 

Why? 

"I  was  addressing  a  young  lady  of  great  moral  worth,  of 
unusual  personal  attractions,  and  the  heiress  of  a  large  fortune. 
She  had  not  reached  her  twentieth  year.  In  a  state  of  repose, 
her  face  was  perfectly  beautiful.  But  when  she  smiled,  a  set 
of  teeth  were  presented,  so  discolored,  so  uneven,  so  defective 
and  decayed,  and  the  breath  was  so  offensive,  that  I  could  not 
possibly  reconcile  it  to  myself  to  be  linked  for  life  to  circum- 
stances so  repulsive.  The  very  thought  of  it  was  abhorrent 
to  me,  so  I  gradually  withdrew  my  attentions,  and  wedded 
poverty,  with  a  sweet  mouth." 

Charity  may  cover  a  multitude  of  sins ;  and  a  great  estate 
may  veil  as  great  a  multitude  of  personal  defects,  to  the  un- 
educated and  the  vulgar,  but  the  wealth  of  Croesus  could  not 


TEE  TEETH.  467 

reconcile  a  man  of  culture  and  refinement  to  wed  a  snaggled- 
tooth  and  an  odoriferous  breath.  In  the  matter  of  lovability, 
nothing  can  compensate  for  the  absence  of  beautiful  teeth  and 
a  sweet  breath.  Hence,  parents  will  perform  towards  their 
children  most  important  service  by  doing  what  they  may  to 
secure  to  them  perfectly  sound  teeth,  not  only  as  an  important 
means  of  preserving  health,  but  as  an  invaluable  aid  in  form- 
ing desirable  alliances. 

Two  things  are  indispensable :  First,  from  the  age  of  four 
years  until  marriage,  have  a  good  dentist  to  examine  every 
tooth  most  minutely,  several  times  a  year.  Second,  begin 
quite  as  early  to  impress  the  child  with  the  importance  of 
keeping  the  teeth  clean,  and  how  best  to  do  it. 

A  child  has  ten  teeth  in  each  jaw ;  all  these,  and  these  only, 
are  shed ;  generally,  in  healthy  children,  two  teeth  are  shown 
at  eight  months,  at  least  eight  in  fourteen  months,  and  the 
whole  twenty  at  two  and  a  half  years. 

From  five  to  six  years  of  age  the  first  permanent  teeth 
appear ;  and  from  that  time  the  frequent  and  vigilant  services 
of  a  sharp-eyed  dentist  ought  to  be  secured.  The  eye-teeth 
appear  between  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  year ;  at  fourteen  the 
large  double-teeth  present  themselves,  and  the  wisdom  teeth 
at  about  twenty. 

Hot  and  cold  drinks  should  be  avoided,  particularly  at  the 
same  meal. 

The  teeth  should  not  be  washed  in  cold  water,  especially 
after  eating,  because  the  contrast  between  it  and  warm  or  hot 
food  is  too  striking,  and  chills  them. 

Each  person  should  have  two  tooth-brushes,  one  moderate- 
ly stiff,  to  be  employed  the  first  thing  in  the  morning ;  the 
other,  which  may  be  a  morning  one,  which  has  been  used  for 
some  time,  should  be  softer,  and  should  not  be  used  in  rub- 
bing across  the  teeth  much,  lest  it  might  cause  the  gums  to 
recede,  and  thus  pave  the  way  for  their  falling  out,  but  should 
be  twisted  up  and  down,  so  that  each  bristle  may  act  as  a 
tooth-pick,  to  dislodge  any  particles  between  the  teeth. 

These  softer  brushes  should  be  used  immediately  after  each 
meal,  taking  care,  at  the  end  of  the  operation,  to  pass  the 
brush  across  the  back  part  of  the  tongue,  and  then  gargle  the 
mouth  and  throat  well  with  water. 


468  THE   TEETH. 

For  cleaning  the  teeth  and  mouth,  warm  water,  always  at 
hand  in  cities,  should  be  used,  but  never  employ  water  so  hot 
or  cold  as  to  cause  uncomfortableness  to  the  teeth,  for  they 
will  soon  be  destroyed  thereby.  When  it  is  very  incon- 
venient to  have  warm  water,  hold  the  cold  water  in  the  back 
part  of  the  mouth,  keeping  it  from  the  teeth  with  the  tongue 
as  much  as  possible,  until  it  is  warmer,  and  then  use  the 
brush. 

It  is  frequently  advised  to  clean  the  teeth  the  last  thing  at 
night ;  a  much  better  plan  is  to  do  it  the  first  thing  after 
supper,  and  then  they  are  in  a  clean  condition  for  four  or  five 
hours  longer  out  of  every  twenty-four,  while  the  trouble  of 
cleaning  the  teeth  a  second  time  would  tend  to  prevent  eating 
anything  later  than  supper. 

The  tooth-brush  should  be  always  used  leisurely,  for  a  slip 
or  inadvertence  may  scale  or  break  off  a  valuable  tooth.  Once 
or  twice  a  week,  the  first  or  last  brushing  should  be  with  pure 
white  soap,  thus :  Wet  the  brush,  and  draw  it  several  times 
across  the  soap,  then  put  it  in  the  mouth,  rubbing  the  teeth 
until  the  mouth  is  full  of  foam,  and  for  a  minute  or  two 
employ  the  brush  on  the  side  of  the  teeth  next  the  tongue, 
above  and  below,  for  it  is  there  that  tartar  collects,  to  the 
eating  away  of  the  gums,  and  eventual  falling  out  of  the  teeth. 
In  most  cases  this  tartar  is  deposited  by  a  living  creature, 
which  is  instantly  destroyed  by  soap-suds,  when  tobacco-juice 
and  the  strongest  acids  have  no  effect. 

Charcoal,  even  when  made  of  the  bark  of  wood,  is  one  of 
the  most  destructive  of  all  tooth  powders.  Eminent  dentists 
agree  in  this  ;  it  finds  its  way  between  the  teeth  and  the  gums, 
and  destroys  both. 

Almost  all  the  tooth  powders  have  a  strong  acid  of  some 
kind,  and  this  cleanses  the  teeth,  but  destroys  their  texture ; 
this  may  be  obviated  to  a  great  extent  if,  immediately  after 
using  any  tooth  powder,  the  teeth  are  well  brushed  with  soap, 
to  antagonize  any  acid  which  may  be  left  about  them. 

If  the  brush  is  used  as  above,  powders  will  not  be  necessary 
more  than  two  or  three  times  a  year ;  in  our  own  case,  com- 
mon salt,  once  in  two  or  three  months,  seems  to  have  an- 
swered an  excellent  purpose,  put  on  a  damp  brush,  rubbed 
across  and  up  and  down  the  teeth.  It  is  not  advised  to  keep 


TABLE  MANNERS.  469 

the  teeth  always  of  a  pearly  whiteness,  for  they  may  be  cleaned 
so  much  as  to  be  worn  away.  It  would  be  a  good  plan  for  a 
dentist,  once  a  year,  to  go  over  every  tooth  with  powdered 
pumice-stone  and  a  piece  of  soft  wood.  Bad  teeth  induce 
dyspepsia,  from  insufficient  chewing  of  the  food ;  they  also 
corrupt  the  breath,  and  are  frequently  the  causes  of  serious 
and  distressing  disease ;  while  good  teeth  not  only  beautify 
the  face,  but  promote  health  and  long  life ;  hence,  special  care 
expended  on  their  preservation  will  be  repaid  an  hundred-fold 
in  the  course  of  a  lifetime. 


TABLE  MANNERS. 

A  SAD  thing  it  is  to  have  a  husband,  or  wife,  or  child  come 
to  the  table,  only  to  fret,  and  growl,  and  complain,  and  sulk. 
It  is  horrible  to  think  of.  And  yet  it  may  be  presumed  that 
the  happiness  of  quite  as  many  excellent  wives  is  marred,  if 
not  wholly  eaten  out,  by  husbands  who  come  to  the  table  with 
a  terrible  dignity ;  or  with  a  selfishness  so  predominant,  that 
it  places  everybody  else,  and  every  thing,  under  tribute  to  its 
supreme  gratification  ;  inoroseness  stamped  on  every  feature  ; 
a  belittling  querulousness  in  every  uttered  sentence.  Here 
one  comes  now,  as  stately  as  a  turkey-cock,  as  cross  as  a  bear, 
and  as  rough  as  a  corn-cob.  He  speaks  in  short,  crusty 
words  ;  the  innocent  prattle  of  his  children  is  an  apparent 
torture  to  him  ;  there  must  not  be  a  whimper  nor  a  whisper, 
for  he  is  poring  over  a  newspaper,  or  in  the  midst  of  some 
plan  or  project  for  gain  or  fame.  His  very  presence  is  felt  as 
a  cloud,  an  incubus,  an  iceberg,  and  there  is  only  gladness 
when  he  is  gone ;  it  is  then  only  that  the  sunshine  of  family 
affection  and  love  comes  out,  and  filial  and  motherly  sympa- 
thies well  up  from  loving  hearts. 

To  meet  at  the  breakfast-table  father,  mother,  children,  all 
well,  ought  to  be  a  happiness  to  any  heart ;  it  should  be  a 
source  of  humble  gratitude,  and  should  wake  up  the  warmest 
feelings  of  our  nature.  Shame  upon  the  contemptible  and 
low-bred  cur,  whether  parent  or  child,  that  can  ever  come  to 
the  breakfast-table,  where  all  the  family  have  met  in  health, 


470  REQIMEN. 

only  to  frown,  and  whine,  and  growl,  and  fret!  It  is  primd 
facie  evidence  of  a  mean,  and  grovelling,  and  selfish,  and  de- 
graded nature,  whencesoever  the  churl  may  have  sprung. 
Nor  is  it  less  reprehensible  to  make  such  exhibitions  at  the 
tea-table :  for,  before  the  morning  comes,  some  of  the  little 
circle  may  be  stricken  with  some  deadly  disease,  to  gather 
around  that  table  not  again  forever  !  Children  in  good  health, 
if  left  to  themselves  at  the  table,  become,  after  a  few  mouth- 
fuls,  garrulous  and  noisy ;  but,  if  within  at  all  reasonable 
or  bearable  bounds,  it  is  better  to  let  them  alone ;  they  eat 
less,  because  they  do  not  eat  so  rapidly  as  if  compelled  to 
keep  silent,  while  the  very  exhilaration  of  spirits  quickens  the 
circulation  of  the  vital  fluids,  and  energizes  digestion  and  as- 
similation. The  extremes  of  society  curiously  meet  in  this 
regard.  The  tables  of  the  rich  and  the  nobles  of  England  are 
models  of  mirth,  wit,  and  bonhommie ;  it  takes  hours  to  get 
through  a  repast,  and  they  live  long.  If  anybody  will  look 
in  upon  the  negroes  of  a  well-to-do  family  in  Kentucky,  while 
at  their  meals,  they  cannot  but  be  impressed  with  the  perfect 
abandon  of  jabber,  cachiunation,  and  mirth;  it  seerns  as  if 
they  could  talk  all  day;  and  they  live  long.  It  follows,  then, 
that,  at  the  family  table,  all  should  meet,  and  do  it  habitually, 
to  make  a  common  interchange  of  high-bred  courtesies,  of 
warm  affections,  of  cheering  rnirthfulness,  and  that  generosity 
of  nature  which  lifts  us  above  the  brutes  which  perish,  pro- 
motive  as  these  things  are  of  good  digestion,  high  health,  and 
a  long  life. 


REGIMEN. 

RIGHT  well  hath  some  old  gentleman  of  the  ancient  time 
written  in  respect  to  health  and  its  preservation  ;  doubtful  are 
we  that  any  man  of  this  diluting  age  could  possibly  comprise 
so  much  sound  sense  in  as  few  words  as  those  which  follow  :  — 

"There  is  a  wisdom  in  this  beyond  the  rules  of  physic.  A 
man's  own  observation,  what  he  finds  good  of,  and  what  he 
finds  hurt  of,  is  the  best  physic  to  preserve  health  ;  but  it  is  a 
safer  conclusion  to  say,  'This  agreeth  not  well  with  me,  there- 
fore I  will  not  continue  it ; '  than  this,  —  '  I  find  no  offence 


DESSERTS.  471 

of  this,  therefore  I  may  use  it;'  for  strength  of  youth  in  na- 
ture passeth  over  many  excesses  which  are  owing  a  man  till 
his  age.  Discern  of  the  coming  on  of  years,  and  think  not  to 
do  the  same  things  still ;  for  age  will  not  be  defied.  Beware 
of  sudden  change  in  any  great  point  of  diet,  and,  if  necessary, 
enforce  it,  fit  the  rest  to  it ;  for  it  is  a  secret  both  of  nature 
and  state,  that  it  is  safer  to  change  many  things  than  one. 
Examine  thy  customs  of  diet,  sleep,  exercise,  apparel,  and  the 
like,  and  try,  in  anything  thou  shalt  judge  hurtful,  to  discon- 
tinue it  little  by  little ;  but  sovas  if  thou  dost  find  any  incon- 
venience by  the  change,  thou  come  back  to  it  again  ;  for  it  is 
hard  to  distinguish  that  which  is  generally  held  good  and 
wholesome  from  that  which  is  good  particularly,  and  fit  for 
thine  own  body.  To  be  free-minded  and  cheerfully  disposed 
at  hours  of  meat,  and  of  sleep,  and  of  exercise,  is  one  of  the 
best  precepts  for  long  lasting.  As  for  the  passions  and 
studies  of  the  mind,  avoid  envy,  envious  fears,  anger,  fretting 
inwards,  subtle  and  knotty  inquisitions,  joy  and  exhilarations 
in  excess,  sadness  not  communicated.  Entertain  hopes ; 
mirth  rather  than  joy ;  variety  of  delights  rather  than  a  sur- 
feit of  them  ;  wonder  and  admiration,  and  therefore  novelties  ; 
studies  that  fill  the  mind  with  splendid  and  illustrious  objects, 
as  histories,  fables,  and  contemplations  of  nature. 


DESSERTS. 

THESE  are  the  agents  which  cause  a  vast  amount  of  human 
suffering,  inasmuch  as  they  tempt  the  appetite,  and  bribe  na- 
ture to  a  transgression,  which  never  fails  of  being  punished 
sooner  or  later.  All  eat  as  much  as  they  want  of  the  ordinary 
dinner  before  the  dessert  comes  in,  and,  without  the  dessert, 
would  feel  a  comfortable  exhilaration  for  the  remainder  of  the 
day  ;  but  the  tempter  comes  in  ;  the  satiated  palate  is  tickled, 
is  whipped  up ;  the  man  stuffs  on,  and,  for  the  remainder  of 
the  day,  is  more  like  a  gorged  anaconda  than  anything  else ; 
so  full,  that  he  rises  from  the  table  with  deliberation,  strives 
against  coughing,  lest  he  might  jolt  up  his  dinner,  and  then 
sits  down  to  doze  away  a  whole  afternoon  under  the  oppressive 
influence  of  an  inglorious  surfeit. 


472  TOMATOES. 

A  large  addition  would  be  made  to  the  comfort  and  health 
of  any  family  which  should  discard  the  whole  catalogue  of 
pies,  pastries,  and  puddings,  as  desserts,  and  take,  in  their 
stead,  one  or  two  oranges  or  apples,  or  a  dish  of  fresh,  ripe 
berries  in  their  natural  state ;  or,  if  out  of  season  or  unat- 
tainable, an  agreeable,  neat,  and  healthful  substitute  may  be 
found  in  a  "  mint-stick,"  a  bit  of  cream-candy,  or  a  piece  of 
pure  maple-sugar. 


TOMATOES. 

THIS  is  one  of  the  most  healthful,  as  well  as  the  most  uni- 
versally liked,  of  all  vegetables.  Its  healthful  qualities  do 
not  depend  on  the  mode  of  preparation  for  the  table  ;  it  may 
be  eaten  thrice  a  day,  cold  or  hot,  cooked  or  raw,  alone,  or 
with  salt,  or  pepper,  or  vinegar,  or  all  together,  to  a  like  ad- 
vantage, and  to  the  utmost  that  can  be  taken  with  an  appetite. 
Its  healthful  quality  arises  from  its  slight  acidity ;  in  this, 
making  it  as  valuable,  perhaps,  as  berries,  cherries,  currants, 
and  similar  articles  ;  it  is  also  highly  nutritious  ;  but  its  chief 
virtue  consists  in  its  tendency  to  keep  the  bowels  free,  owing 
to  the  seeds  which  it  contains,  they  acting  as  mechanical  irri- 
tants to  the  inner  coating  of  the  bowels,  causing  them  to  throw 
out  a  larger  amount  of  fluid  matter  than  would  otherwise  have 
been  done,  to  the  effect  of  keeping  the  mucous  surfaces  lubri- 
cated, and  securing  a  greater  solubility  of  the  intestinal  con- 
tents ;  precisely  on  the  principle  that  figs  and  white  mustard 
seeds  are  so  frequently  efficient  in  removing  constipation  in 
certain  forms  of  disease.  The  tomato  season  ends  with  the 
frost.  If  the  vines  are  pulled  up  before  frost  comes,  and 
are  hung  up  in  a  well-ventilated  cellar,  with  the  tomatoes 
hanging  to  them,  the  "  Love-Apple  "  will  continue  ripening 
until  Christmas.  The  cellar  should  not  be  too  dry  nor  too 
warm.  The  knowledge  of  this  may  be  improved  to  great 
practical  advantage  for  the  benefit  of  many  who  are  invalids, 
and  who  are  fond  of  the  tomato. 


CATARRH.  473 


CATARRH. 

CATARRH  is  a  Greek  word,  which  means  a  "  flowing  from," 
and  is  synonymous  with  a  common  cold.  A  cold  in  the  head 
causes  a  running  from  the  nose  ;  a  cold  in  the  eyes  makes  them 
water ;  a  cold  in  the  chest  or  lungs  causes  an  increased  ex- 
pectoration ;  a  cold  in  the  bowels  occasions  diarrhoea.  This 
"flowing,"  whether  from  nose,  eyes,  lungs,  or  bowels,  is 
nature's  effort  to  ward  off  the  effects  of  a  previous  injury ;  it 
is  essentially  a  curative  process,  and  ought  never  to  be  in- 
terfered with.  If  this  "  flo'wing  from  "  is  stopped  in  any  way, 
whether  by  external  applications  or  internal  medicines,  the  in- 
evitable effect,  always,  is  to  drive  it  to  some  other  part  to 
seek  an  outlet,  for  nature  will  not  rest  ever,  until  the  riddance 
is  effected.  Within  a  month,  a  lady  was  attacked  with  a  great 
itching  and  running  in  the  nose ;  some  ignoramus  advised  her 
to  use  a  certain  kind  of  snuff,  to  "  dry  it  up  ;  "  it  had  the  effect 
in  a  few  hours,  and  she  was  charmed  with  the  result;  she 
thought  it  a  wonderful  medicine  :  that  night  she  was  attacked 
with  asthma,  which  confined  her  to  her  bed  for  two  weeks,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  distressing  sufferings  which  filled  the  in- 
terval, day  and  night. 

A  gentleman  complained  of  a  cold  in  the  head,  with  sick 
headache  ;  some  one  advised  him  to  have  buckets  of  cold  water 
poured  on  the  top  of  his  head,  which  was  followed  by  a 
welcomed  relief;  the  next  day  he  complained  of  a  sore  throat, 
which  troubled  him  as  long  as  he  lived. 

Many  persons  have  diarrhoea  as  a  consequence  of  a  cold ; 
they  cannot  rest  until  they  "  take  something  "  to  "  check  it," 
with  the  certain  result  of  its  falling  on  the  liver,  to  end  in  a 
*  bilious  attack,"  if  not  on  the  lungs,  to  cause  pneumonia,  or 
pleurisy,  or  other  more  serious  form  of  disease. 

A  gentleman  had  a  cold  in  the  head,  which  affected  his  hear- 
ing ;  it  was  igiiorantly  tampered  with,  and  apparently  cured  ; 
but  the  eyes  began  to  complain  shortly  after,  to  remedy  which 
he  spent  two  years,  and  a  thousand  dollars,  under  the  most 
eminent  allopaths  and  water-cures,  with  no  efficient  result ; 
and  his  eyes  are  as  troublesome  to-day  as  they  were  some  ten 


474  OUB  BOYS. 

years  ago.  All  "  flowings,"  "runnings,"  etc.,  are  the  result 
of  what,  in  common  parlance,  is  a  w  humor  in  the  blood,"  and 
nature  is  endeavoring  to  "run  it  oft';"  but  our  reckless  and 
ignorant  interferences  thwart  her  in  her  efforts,  and  bring  oil 
greater  calamities. 

It  is  sad  to  think  of  how  many  thousands  of  money,  honest- 
ly and  hardly  earned  by  persons  living  in  the  country,  have 
been  lost  by  treacherous  advertisements.  Catarrh  seldom 
leads  to  any  serious  results,  if  it  is  simply  let  alone,  except 
as  stated  further  on. 

In  all  catarrhs,  chronic  or  acute,  long  or  short,  a  wise 
physician  will  do  nothing  to  stop  or  repress,  but  will  use 
means  to  cause  a  greater  activity  of  the  liver,  and  prescribe 
an  unstimulating  and  cooling  diet,  warmth,  and  judicious 
exercise. 

For  ourselves,  we  would  give  physic  a  wide  berth.  If  we 
had  a  "flowing  from,"  a  catarrh,  a  cold,  all  of  which  mean 
precisely  the  same  thing  in  nature  and  essence,  we  would  let  it 
flow,  and  thus  have  the  system  relieved  of  an  enemy,  whose 
presence  it  will  not  tolerate.  But  there  are  three  other  things 
which  may  be  done  to  very  great  advantage,  because  they 
would  expedite  the  cure. 

1.  Keep  the  body  very  comfortably  warm  by  all  available 
means,  especially  the  feet. 

2.  Take  a  good  deal  of  exercise  in  the  open  air,  to  the 
extent  of  keeping  up  a  very  slight  perspiration  for  several 
hours  during  the  twenty-four. 

3.  Live    on    light,    loosening,    cooling    food,  —  moderate 
amounts,  —  such  as  water-gruel,  crust  of  bread,  stewed  fruits, 
ripe  berries,  and  nothing  else,  until  entirely  well. 


OUR    BOYS. 

WHAT  shall  we  make  of  them?  What  will  become  of 
them?  These  are  practical  questions,  and  made  every  day 
with  serious  solicitude  by  intelligent  and  thoughtful  parents. 
The  rich  and  the  poor  have  a  like  ambition  to  put  their  sons 
in  good  places ;  they  take  more  pains  to  select  places  which 


OUR  BOYS.  475 

will  honor  their  sons,  than  to  make  their  sons  capable  of 
honoring  places.  The  inquiry  should  be,  not  for  a  place  large 
enough  for  a  son,  but  how  to  prepare  a  son  to  fill  a  place 
with  protit  to  those  who  may  call  him  to  it,  and  with  credit  to 
himself. 

An  ancient  and  honored  family  name  in  this  city  has  been 
ineffaceably  tarnished  lately,  by  using  family  influence  to  get 
one  of  its  members  into  a  place  of  very  high  trust  and  re- 
sponsibility ;  an  office  for  which  he  was  so  utterly  incompetent, 
that  its  accounts  have  fallen  into  inextricable  confusion,  while 
he  himself,  charged  with  a  degrading  crime,  has  been  led  in 
chains  to  a  felon's  cell,  in  a  state  of  bodily  health  which  melts 
the  hardest  heart  with  pity,  while  his  venerable  mother  is 
made  to  weep  tears  of  blood  over  the  sad  misfortunes  of  the 
child  of  her  heart. 

Inquire,  then,  what  your  child  is  fit  for,  rather  than  what  will 
tit  him ;  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic  is  fit  for  him,  but  he 
may  not  be  fit  for  it;  it  may  receive  him,  but  he  may  not  be 
able  to  fill  it  with  ability  and  honor.  That  office  is  fit  for  any 
man,  the  greatest  and  the  best,  but  your  son  might  not  be  fit 
for  it ;  to  occupy  it  and  fill  it,  to  discharge  its  duties  with 
fidelity.  You  must  seek  a  place  adapted  to  your  son's  capa- 
bilities, for  you  may  not  adapt  his  capabilities  to  a  place. 
Seek  a  place  for  him  which  he  will  honor  by  elevating  it,  and 
making  it  the  more  influential ;  but  do  not  seek  to  put  him  in 
a  position  which  is  to  honor  him.  You  are  a  rich  man.  It  is 
neither  safe,  nor  respectable,  nor  wise,  to  bring  any  youth  to 
manhood  without  a  calling,  without  an  occupation  by  which  he 
could  maintain  himself  in  case  he  should  lose  his  fortune.  In 
looking  around  for  such  a  calling,  instead  of  making  the 
inquiry  what  you  would  like  him  to  become,  seek  rather  to 
know  what  occupation  is  suited  to  his  capacities  —  what  calling 
his  abilities  can  fill.  You  might  well  like  him  to  become  an 
eminent  lawyer,  but  has  he  that  plodding  and  that  tenacity  of 
purpose,  which  will  enable  him  to  investigate  and  compare 
and  deduce  with  unerring  accuracy  for  forty  years,  before  he 
can  be  fairly  able  to  commence  practice?  You  might  like  for 
him  to  become  a  physician,  but  has  he  the  self-denial  to  cut 
off  the  flesh  from  dead  meiis'  bones,  to  live  in  the  charnel- 
house  for  long  years  together ;  and  then  have  the  patience  to 


476  OUR  SOTS. 

wait  for  practice  for  other  long  years ;  and  the  self-sacrifice 
to  go  at  every  call,  of  prince  or  pauper,  in  the  midnights  of 
December,  or  the  tierce  suns  of  July,  in  rain,  or  storm,  or  sleet, 
or  snow  ?  Will  he  do  this  until  forty  years  of  age  for  a  bare 
subsistence,  before  he  can  make  patients  come  to  him  instead 
of  he  going  to  them  ? 

Perhaps  your  heart  burns  to  make  him  a  minister,  and  in 
rapt  imagination  peering  beyond  the  shores  of  time,  you  see 
him  like  some  tall  archangel  leading  along  his  vast  battalions 
to  the  Great  White  Throne,  saying,  "  Here  am  I,  the  instru- 
mentality Thou  hast  made,  of  bringing  these  immortals  here," 
and  then  loud  paeans  come  from  seraphic  legions  in  glad  reply, 
"  Welcome,  brother,  Home  ! "  No  greater  glory  than  this  is 
there  in  earth  or  heaven  for  any  created  intelligence.  But  for 
such  an  office,  it  becomes  a  man  that  he  have  a  range  of  learn- 
ing beyond  that  of  other  men.  Has  your  son  made  the  acquisi- 
tion? He  must  have  an  abiding  feeling  that  he  is  less  than 
the  least  of  all  who  love  the  Master,  and  must  have  the  capa- 
city to  become  all  things  to  all  men.  Has  he  these  humilities, 
and  these  versatilities  ?  He  must  be  silent  when  he  is  scorned  ; 
he  must  not  return  a  stroke,  nor  answer  to  a  taunt ;  when 
curses  come,  he  must  bless  ;  when  sinned  against,  he  must  for- 
give ;  has  he  the  moral  courage  to  meet  these  debasements, 
and  yet  above  them  all  to  stand  and  feel  that  he  is  second  to 
no  living  man ;  that  he  is  an  ambassador  from  the  court  of 
the  King  of  kings?  Has  he  the  breadth  of  intellect  to  com- 
pass all  learnings  ?  the  humility  of  heart  to  feel  abidingly  be- 
fore his  Maker  that  he  is  but  a  worm,  and  yet  the  grandeur  of 
soul  in  the  light  of  the  Lamb  to  feel,  "  I  heir  the  universe  by 
right  of  birth?" 

Instead,  then,  of  determining  what  you  would  like  your 
son  to  be,  seek  to  ascertain  what  he  is  capable  of  being; 
what  he  is  certainly  competent  for.  In  short,  seek  not  for 
your  child  the  post  he  can  get,  but  the  post  he  can  fill ;  for  it 
is  better  to  be  an  honor  to  the  hod  than  a  disgrace  to  the 
crown  —  better  be  an  accomplished  mechanic  than  a  con- 
temptible king ! 


NERVOUSNESS.  477 


NERVOUSNESS. 

A  WEALTHY  Carolina  planter,  who  claims  to  have  "  one  of 
the  best  wives  in  the  world,"  applied  for  medical  advice  some 
time  ago.  He  was  full  of  the  fidgets,  was  a  bundle  of  nerves, 
every  one  of  which  had  some  complaint  to  make  every  now 
and  then  ;  at  another  time  they  would  all  squall  out  together, 
then  he  would  literally  faint  away ;  at  other  times  he  felt  an 
insupportable  "goneness  "  at  the  stomach,  and  often  wished  it 
had  "gone,"  for  there  was  such  an  incessant  "gnawing,"  es- 
pecially before  dinner,  that  he  felt  as  if  he  must  eat  something 
or  die.  We  sent  him  some  medicine,  and  advised  him  to  die  ; 
or,  at  least,  to  make  the  experiment,  to  see  whether  it  would 
kill  him  or  not,  rather  than  to  be  such  a  slave  to  his  "  belly." 
At  an  interval  of  some  months  he  sends  us,  —  not  our  fee, 
that  we  always  take  before  we  give  advice,  for  then  we  know 
that  we  are  paid,  and  work  cheerfully  and  hopefully.  We 
medicate  by  the  month,  not  by  the  job,  because  we  want  to 
make  our  patients  spry,  and  improve  their  time,  and  not  hang 
on  our  hands  indefinitely,  and  run  up  long  bills  against  them- 
selves. If  they  don't  begin  to  get  decidedly  better  within  a 
month,  it  is  a  w  sign  "  that  they  would  do  well  to  go  elsewhere. 
As  we  were  saying,  our  quondam  patient  writes,  that  he  has 
not  had  as  good  health  in  seven  years,  and  that  he  attributes 
it  entirely  to  our  advice.  Somebody  began  to  sniff  a  mice 
just  then,  —  "  entirely  to  your  advice  !  "  He  took  everything 
—  but  our  pills.  We  thought  of  publishing  the  letter  until 
we  came  to  that  part  of  it  inquiring,  "  Will  they  keep  good 
until  next  summer?"  This  was  July,  and  the  pills  were  sent 
in  April !  If  he  had  only  left  out  that  part  of  it,  what  a  good 
*  certificate  "  we  would  have  had  ! 

There  are,  however,  several  valuable  lessons  to  be  drawn 
by  our  readers  from  this  narration.  First,  serious  ailments 
may  be  cured  without  physic.  Second,  yielding  to  the 
gnawings  of  the  stomach  before  meal-times  is,  generally,  a 
means  of  fixing  the  dyspepsia.  Third,  a  judicious  system  of 
dieting,  that  is,  eating  plain,  nourishing  food,  at  regular  times, 
and  in  moderate  amounts,  is  sometimes  happily  efficacious  in 


478  SMALL  POX. 

removing  that  K  nervousness,"  or  *  nervous  irritability,"  which 
not  only  makes  the  life  of  the  dyspeptic  or  the  bilious 
wretched,  but  makes  the  members  of  their  families  more  or 
less  so.  The  subject,  certainly  merits  the  consideration  of 
nervous  persons. 

Nervousness  and  dyspepsia  may  be,  and  are,  generally, 
cured  without  starvation  or  medicine  ;  in  fact,  they  are  often 
aggravated  thereby.  Dieting,  starving,  is  good  in  its  place  ; 
but  it  has  been  unwisely  practised  in  many  cases,  and  life  has 
paid  the  forfeit.  Exercise,  suitably  conducted,  is  an  impor- 
tant means  of  invigoration ;  but  taken  injudiciously,  it  kills 
rather  than  cures.  But  how  to  order  the  exercise,  and  how 
to  appoint  the  food  in  quantity,  quality,  and  frequency,  when 
to  give  medicine  and  when  to  withhold  it,  to  the  surest  benefit 
and  highest  safety  of  the  suffering,  requires  the  learning,  the 
experience,  the  observation,  and  the  comparison  of  a  lifetime. 
Yet  millions  dtiily  give  and  take  medical  advice  from  one 
single  experience  or  observation  ;  and  multitudes  daily  die  in 
consequence. 


SMALL  POX. 

FROM  a  very  wide  field  of  observations,  diligently  made  and 
carefully  collated,  European  statisticians  have  arrived  at  the 
following  conclusions  :  — 

Of  one  hundred  persons  vaccinated,  and  who  subsequently 
take  the  small  pox,  six  die ;  while  of  one  hundred  unvacci- 
nated,  who  take  the  disease,  six  times  that  many  die,  or  thirty- 
six  out  of  every  hundred  ;  in  other  words,  the  vaccinated  man, 
if  he  does  take  the  small  pox,  has  six  chances  of  getting  well, 
while  the  unvaccinated  has  only  one. 

Infantile  vaccination  has,  of  late  years,  become  less  efficient 
than  formerly  ;  not  that  there  is  less  protecting  power  in  vac- 
cination, but  because  it  is  done  too  negligently,  or  because 
there  has  been  remissness  in  procuring  good  vaccine  matter 
from  healthy  sources ;  and  it  may  be  that  the  vaccine  matter 
has  deteriorated  since  its  introduction  by  the  immortal  Jenner, 
three  quarters  of  a  century  ago  ;  therefore,  one  of  two  courses 
should  be  followed,  —  either  have  the  child  revaccinated  at 


APPLES.  479 

the  age  of  ten  years,  by  a  careful  physician  who  would  take 
the  utmost  pains  to  obtain  good  matter,  or  have  a  cow  inocu- 
lated with  the  matter  of  small  pox  from  a  man;  then,  that 
which  the  cow  produces  will  be  fresh,  pure,  and  powerful ; 
this  would  give  a  new  and  unadulterated  article,  sufficient  for 
half  a  century  to  come. 

The  Prussian,  more  than  any  government  in  existence, 
practices  vaccination ;  and  every  soldier  is  revaccinated  on 
entering  the  army,  which  numbers  several  scores  of  thousands, 
the  result  being,  that,  during  1859,  there  were  only  two 
deaths  from  small  pox.  Out  of  one  hundred  persons  vacci- 
nated in  infancy,  seventy  "take,"  when  revaccinated  on  enter- 
ing the  Prussian  army.  Varioloid  is  when  small  pox  is  taken 
after  vaccination. 


APPLES. 

THERE  is  scarcely  an  article  of  vegetable  food  more  widely 
useful,  and  more  universally  loved,  than  the  apple.  Why 
every  farmer  in  the  nation  has  not  an  apple-orchard,  where 
the  trees  will  grow  at  all,  is  one  of  the  mysteries.  Let  every 
family  lay  in  from  two  to  ten  or  more  barrels,  and  it  will  be 
to  them  the  most  economical  investment  in  the  whole  range 
of  culinaries.  A  raw  mellow  apple  is  digested  in  an  hour 
and  a  half;  while  boiled  cabbage  requires  five  hours.  The 
most  healthful  dessert  which  can  be  placed  on  the  table,  is  a 
baked  apple.  If  taken  freely  at  breakfast,  with  coarse  bread 
and  butter,  without  meat  or  flesh  of  any  kind,  it  has  an  ad- 
mirable effect  on  the  general  system,  often  removing  consti- 
pation, correcting  acidities,  and  cooling  off  febrile  conditions, 
more  effectually  than  the  most  approved  medicines.  If  fami- 
lies could  be  induced  to  substitute  the  apple,  —  sound,  ripe, 
and  luscious,  —  for  the  pies,  cakes,  candies,  and  other  sweet- 
meats with  which  their  children  are  too  often  indiscreetly 
stuffed,  there  would  be  a  diminution  in  the  sum  total  of  doc- 
tors' bills  in  a  single  year,  sufficient  to  lay  in  a  stock  of  this 
delicious  fruit  for  a  whole  season's  use. 


480  COLD  PHILOSOPHY. 


COLD  PHILOSOPHY. 

WHEN  Patrick  was  asked  what  he  would  take  to  climb  a 
steeple  one  frosty  morning,  "  I'll  take  a  cold,  yer  honor,  be 
sure,"  was  the  ready  reply.  Sandy,  standing  hard  by,  said  he 
would  "  take  a  dollar."  It  may  be  practically  useful  to  know 
how  a  cold  acts  on  the  system.  Colds  always  come  from  out- 
side agencies.  In  health,  from  two  to  six  pounds  of  waste 
and  impure  matter,  in  the  shape  of  fluid  and  gas,  is  passed 
from  the  interior  body  towards  the  surface ;  the  skin  is  per- 
forated by  millions  of  little  holes,  through  which  this  waste  is 
poured  outside  the  body ;  a  good  deal  of  it  dries  and  forms 
into  flakes.  In  health,  these  holes  or  "pores"  are  open, 
known  by  a  "  soft  feel "  of  the  skin ;  they  are  kept  open  by 
warmth,  but  close  instantly  on  the  application  of  cold  ;  if  the 
closure  has  been  sudden,  decided,  or  general,  a  feeling  is 
caused,  familiarly  known  as  a  "chill;  "  these  waste  and  im- 
pure fluids,  not  being  able  to  have  an  exit  through  their 
natural  channels,  retreat  and  seek  a  place  of  escape  elsewhere  ; 
if  they  find  it  instantly,  as  in  an  attack  of  loose  bowels,  the 
shock  to  the  system  is  expended  in  that  direction,  and  the 
cold  is  cut  short  off;  the  same  if  the  person  is  seized  with  an 
attack  of  vomiting,  or  of  violent  bleeding  at  the  nose,  or  an 
excessive  watering  at  the  nose,  or  of  an  accidental  wound 
causing  the  loss  of  a  large  quantity  of  blood.  It  is  as  if  the 
natural  vent  of  a  steam-engine  were  closed  while  in  operation  ; 
if  an  equal  "  vent"  is  made  in  another  direction,  all  is  well ; 
and  the  vent  must  be  had,  or  an  explosion  is  inevitable.  But 
before  this  vent  is  made,  in  case  of  a  cold  having  been  taken, 
and  the  arrested  outgoing  fluids  not  having  as  yet  found  egress, 
there  is  that  much  more  of  actual  matter  in  the  system  than  it 
is  accustomed  to,  making  us  feel  "stuffed  up,"  "full,"  "op- 
pressed." Most  expressive  and  literally  true  are  these  phrases, 
and  until  a  vent  is  made,  the  fuller  and  fuller  does  the  body 
become.  We  express  ourselves  as  feeling  "  bad  all  over,"  and 
no  wonder,  for  every  blood-vessel  in  the  body  is  not  only 
fuller  than  it  ought  to  be,  but  it  is  filled  with  a  fluid  made  up 
of  the  pure  blood,  mixed  with  all  the  impurities  which  would 


COLD  PHILOSOPHY.  481 

otherwise  have  been  thrown  out  of  the  system  as  effete  matter  ; 
and  the  blood  of  the  whole  body  being  impure,  imperfect, 
feeling,  taste,  appetite,  every  bodily  sense  is  deranged,  the 
mind  participates  in  the  general  disorder,  and  petulance  and 
ill-nature  pervade  the  whole  deportment,  and  what  the  suf- 
ferer feels,  others  see,  —  that  he  is  "as  cross  as  a  bear." 

If,  however,  within  a  few  hours  after  a  felt  chill,  or  after  a 
cold  has  been  taken,  and  before  the  current  has  become  in  a 
measure  fixed  in  its  unnatural  direction  inwards,  the  "  pores  " 
of  the  skin  are  reopened,  that  current  is  turned  back  and  harm 
is  avoided;  hence,  the  efficacy  of  what  is  called  the  "old 
woman's  remedy,"  "  a  good  sweat,"  produced  by  putting  the 
patient  to  bed,  "tucking  in"  the  bed-clothes,  and  pouring 
down  a  gallon,  more  or  less,  of  hot  "  catnip  tea,"  or  any  other 
hot  drink.  We  have  pleasant  memories  of  the  good  taste  of  a 
"  stew,"  a  mixture  of  Bourbon  whiskey,  hot  water,  sugar,  a 
little  butter,  and  hot  spices.  O,  how  good  it  was !  It's  a 
medicine  we  always  take  with  pleasure,  but  we  don't  advise 
others  to  do  so  —  it's  dangerous,  very  !  its  ultimate  effects 
have  been  the  death  of  many  a  noble-hearted  fellow. 

But  if  all  the  discomfort  of  a  cold  is  caused  by  an  unusual 
amount  of  matter  being  shut  up  in  the  system,  is  it  not  the 
most  consummate  folly  to  eat  an  atom  of  anything,  or  drink  a 
drop  of  water,  to  increase  the  "  fulness  "  of  the  body  ?  We 
should,  instead,  the  very  moment  a  chill  has  been  experienced, 
or  that  we  in  any  other  way  become  sensible  of  the  fact  that 
we  have  taken  cold,  set  about  doing  two  things  :  First,  get  up 
a  feeling  of  warmth  in  the  body,  even  if  it  requires  a  room  to 
be  heated  to  two  hundred  degrees  of  Fahrenheit,  and  keep  it 
at  that  point  until  perspiration  has  been  induced,  and  con- 
tinued for  some  hours ;  in  addition,  do  not  eat  an  atom  of 
food,  at  least  until  next  day,  or  until  you  are  conscious  that 
the  cold  has  been  broken ;  and  then,  for  a  few  days,  live  ex- 
clusively on  soups,  crust  of  cold  bread,  hot  teas,  and  fruits. 

Let  it  be /kept  in  remembrance  that  every  mouthful  of  food, 
even  of  the  mildest,  a  man  swallows  from  the  instant  the  cold 
has  been  taken,  only  makes  a  proportional  amount  of  phlegm 
to  be  coughed  up.  "  Feed  a  cold  and  starve  a  fever,"  is  a 
tremendous  lie.  Starve  them  to  death,  as  we  would  a  gar- 
rison, by  cutting  off  supplies,  and  the  fortress  will  be  yielded 


482  THE  AIM  OF  LIFE. 

within  thirty-six  hours,  if  the  process  be  begun  within  twelve 
hours  lifter  the  cold  has  been  taken.  If  a  chill  has  been  ex- 
perienced, begin  on  the  instant  to  stop  supplies,  and  then  to 
cause  an  artificial  drain,  by  the  means  already  named  for  in- 
ducing free  perspiration ;  in  this  manner,  the  very  worst  colds 
will  be  arrested,  will  be  cut  short  off  in  four  cases  out  of  five. 
Unfortunately,  the  first  effect  of  a  cold  is  to  increase  the  ap- 
petite, the  indulgence  of  which  protracts  the  cold  to  days  and 
weeks,  with  this  result,  that  after  the  first  two  or  three  days, 
food  becomes  an  aversion,  and  there  is  no  appetite  for  weeks 
together  sometimes;  better,  then,  starve  willingly  for  a  day 
or  two  than  be  unable  to  eat  anything  for  a  fortnight,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  troublesome  coughing  and  other  discomforts 
during  the  whole  of  that  time. 


THE  AIM  OF  LIFE. 

THE  chief  ambition  of  most  young  men  of  intelligence  and 
energy,  on  entering  the  great  field  of  the  world,  is  to  accumu- 
late money  enough  to  enable  them  to  retire  from  business,  and 
pass  the  latter  years  of  life  in  quiet  comfort.  On  a  minute 
inquiry  as  to  the  meaning  they  attach  to  that  expression,  it 
will  be  found  that  it  is  to  have  a  plenty  of  everything,  except 
that  of  having  a  plenty  to  do  of  what  is  necessary  to  be  done. 
They  want  to  be  placed  in  a  position  which  will  allow  them  to 
do  something,  anything,  or  nothing,  according  to  the  inclina- 
tion of  the  moment.  This  is  an  aim  at  once  narrow-minded, 
selfish,  and  dangerous ;  dangerous  to  soul,  body,  and  estate ; 
dangerous  alike  to  social  position  and  to  moral  character. 
That  very  activity,  energy,  and  enterprise  which  enables  a 
man  to  "  retire  on  a  fortune  "  at  fifty,  and  be  compelled  to  do 
comparatively  nothing,  will  as  certainly  make  a  wreck  of  mind 
and  body,  as  that  the  fleetest  locomotive  in  the  world  will  be 
shivered  to  atoms  if  it  is  instantaneously  arrested  in  its 
progress.  But  there  is  this  difference  between  man  and 
machinery  :  the  magnificent  engine  may  be  gradually  brought 
to  a  perfect  stand-still,  and  can  be  put  in  motion  again  to  ac- 
complish other  labors  new  and  grand ;  not  so  with  the  ma- 


THE  AIM  OF  LIFE.  483 

chinery  of  the  mind ;  in  its  "  connections  "  with  the  material 
body,  it  has  acquired  a  "  momentum  "  in  half  a  century's  prog- 
ress, a  habit  of  action,  which  cannot  be  arrested,  cannot  be 
brought  to  a  dead  stand,  to  a  position  of  having  nothing  to  do, 
and  doing  nothing,  without  the  wreck  of  mind  or  ruin  of  body, 
if,  indeed,  not  both. 

The  only  way  in  which  a  man  can  "  retire  on  a  fortune " 
with  safety,  with  comfort,  with  happiness,  and  honor,  is  to  lay 
his  plans  so  that  his  time  shall  be  fully  and  compulsorily  oc- 
cupied in  advancing  the  well-being  of  others,  in  every  way 
compatible  with  the  safety  of  his  own  fortune  and  health.  It 
may  be  instructive  to  know  the  way  to  death  which  many  suc- 
cessful business  men  travel,  the  steps  taken  as  seen  by  an 
observant  physician,  the  little  things  which  lead  to  grand 
results,  the  total  subversion  of  the  aims  and  labors  of  a  life- 
time. A  man  retired  on  a  fortune  has  nothing  to  do  after  he 
has  built  his  house,  laid  out  his  grounds,  and  arranged  his 
affairs  perfectly  to  his  "  own  notion,"  according  to  his  own 
"  ideas  of  comfort."  The  mind  can  no  more  be  arrested  in  its 
activities,  than  can  a  star  in  space.  He  gets  tired  of  sitting 
about ;  gets  tired  of  reading ;  gets  tired  of  riding  around  his 
"  place  ; "  gets  tired  of  visits  and  visitors  ;  then  the  greatest 
pleasure,  the  one  which  can  be  looked  forward  to  several 
times  every  day,  is  that  of  eating ;  it  in  time  becomes,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  only  pleasure ;  it  is  indulged  in  ;  after  a 
while,  the  surplus  not  being  worked  off,  the  appetite  either 
fails,  or  discomfort  attends  its  indulgence,  and  there  being 
nothing  to  do  but  for  the  mind  to  dwell  on  these  discomforts, 
they  become  exaggerated,  and  nine  times  out  of  ten  a  sip  of 
brandy  is  resorted  to ;  nine  times  out  of  ten  it  alleviates,  and 
having  an  alleviant  so  easily  accessible,  it  is  not  at  all  won- 
derful that  it  should  be  frequently  resorted  to ;  so  frequently, 
indeed,  that  before  the  man  is  aware  of  it,  or  even  his  watch- 
ful wife,  he  is  a  regular  drinker,  is  "uncomfortable  "  without 
it ;  the  appetite  for  it  grows  apace ;  he  is  a  confirmed  and 
hopeless  drunkard,  and  "death  and  hell"  his  end.  That  now 
excellent  paper,  the  Philadelphia  Inquirer,  narrates  the  follow- 
ing, and  can  give  the  names  of  the  parties  :  — 

"  About  five  years  ago  an  enterprising  firm  was  engaged 
in  a  luqrative  business  on  Water  Street.  Its  integrity  in 


484  THE  AIM  OF  LIFE. 

business  was  beyond  suspicion  or  cavil.  The  promptness  with 
which  its  obligations  were  met  was  the  subject  of  general 
encomium,  and  its  paper  had,  in  every  case,  the  value  of 
bank  notes,  or  of  specie.  The  firm  was  composed  of  two 
members,  both  of  them  wealthy.  With  time  their  riches  grew 
apace,  and  with  cash  their  kindness  and  integrity  increased. 
The  senior  partner  resided  in  a  magnificent  West  End  mansion, 
surrounded  by  all  the  luxuries  which  money  could  command 
and  taste  could  ask.  The  junior  partner  lived  with  his  family 
in  a  rural  district,  upon  a  small  farm.  He  passed  the  business 
hours  in  his  establishment  upon  Water  Street,  and  in  the  cool 
of  the  evening  rested  in  his  cottage.  His  children  grew  up 
healthy  and  contented,  and  all  the  fireside  virtues  gambolled 
about  his  feet. 

"  In  the  lapse  of  time  the  firm  dissolved.  Its  purposes 
had  been  subserved  in  the  success  of  its  speculations  and 
the  preservation  of  its  integrity,  and  each  partner  retired 
to  his  home  to  enjoy  the  profits  of  his  labor.  The  West  End 
millionnaire  has  forfeited  the  respect  and  friendship  of  his 
ancient  partner.  We  passed  him  last  evening  in  a  state  of 
bloated  intoxication,  filthy  with  exposure  and  absolute  want. 
The  men  with  whom  he  once  associated  would  blush  to-day 
to  recognize  him.  His  fortune  has  been  squandered  in  con- 
tinued excesses,  his  family  is  scattered  and  penniless,  and 
the  sole  aim  of  his  degraded  ambition  is  to  find  the  where- 
withal to  purchase  drink.  The  junior  partner  has  not 
changed  in  circumstances.  The  home  ties  have  proved  strong- 
er with  him  than  the  attractions  of  vice,  and  he  still  lives  to 
demonstrate  the  advantage  of  retired  virtue  and  contented 
competence.'' 

Instead,  then,  of  aiming  to  pass  the  latter  part  of  life  in 
dangerous,  inglorious  ease,  let  the  ambition  be  to  spend  it 
in  active  benevolences,  happifying  alike  the  heart  of  both 
giver  and  receiver,  thus  leaving  a  name  behind,  not  written  in 
the  sands  of  selfish  indulgence,  but  engraven  in  imperishable 
characters  on  the  grateful  memories  of  man,  and  in  the 
"  Book  of  Life." 


HEARTY  SUPPERS.  485 


HEARTY  SUPPERS. 

IN  this  exaggerating  age,  we  think  we  can  safely  say,  that 
scarcely  a  day  passes,  in  which  we  do  not  receive,  personally 
or  by  letter,  some  manifestation  of  felt  indebtedness  to  our 
writings;  and  if  the  question  is  asked,  In  what  direction?  it 
is  most  frequently  answered,  "  In  reference  to  the  benefits  de- 
rived from  abstinence,  in  whole  or  in  part,  from  eating  any- 
thing later  than  a  midday  dinner."  It  was  with  a  feeling  of 
painful  disappointment,  with,  perhaps,  some  vexation,  that 
we  recently  read  of  the  death  of  a  brother  editor.  He  died 
in  the  very  prime  of  life, —  not  thirty-one,  —  in  the  midst  of 
usefulness,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  usual  good  health,  until 
within  twenty-four  hours  of  his  decease.  He  was  an  able 
preacher,  and  a  fine  belles-lettres  scholar.  He  was  on  a  jour- 
ney, on  the  Master's  business,  and  died  from  home.  So 
many  good  people  loved  him  and  looked  up  to  him  !  In  less 
than  three  lines  the  whole  story  is  told.  "He  travelled  all 
day,  ate  in  the  evening  a  hearty  supper,  waked  up  in  the 
morning  with  a  headache,  became  unconscious,  and  died  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  apoplectic  disease  !  " 

Eating  heartily  in  an  exhausted,  or  even  in  a  greatly  debili- 
tated bodily  condition,  is  dangerous  at  any  hour.  Many  a 
man  has  fallen  apoplectic  at  the  close  of  a  hearty  dinner :  but 
the  danger  is  greatly  increased  by  going  to  bed  soon  after ; 
for  the  weight  of  the  meal  —  a  pound  or  two  —  rests  steadily 
on  the  great  veins  of  the  body,  arrests  the  flow  of  the  blood, 
as  a  continuous  pressure  of  the  foot  on  a  hose-pipe  will,  more 
or  less  completely,  stop  the  flow  of  water  along  it.  This  ar- 
restment  causes  a  damming  up  of  blood  in  the  vessels  of  the 
brain,  which,  at  length,  cannot  longer  bear  the  distention, 
and  burst,  causing  effusion  there,  which  is  instant  death  some- 
times, and  certain  death  always. 

There  is  scarcely  a  reader,  of  middle  life,  who  has  not  more 
than  once  been  nearer  death  than  he  imagined,  from  this  very 
cause.  A  man  feels  in  his  sleep  as  if  some  terrible  calamity 
was  impending,  some  horrible  beast  is  after  him,  or  some 
fearful  flood  is  about  to  overwhelm  him  ;  but,  in  spite  of  every 


486  HEARTY  SUPPERS. 

effort,  he  cannot  remove  himself  sufficiently  fast ;  the  enemy 
behind  is  increasing  upon  him ;  and,  at  length,  in  an  agony 
of  sweat,  he  is  able,  by  a  desperate  effort,  to  set  the  stream 
of  life  in  motion  by  uttering  some  sound  fearful  to  be  heard, 
or  only  saves  himself  from  falling  into  some  fathomless  abyss, 
by  a  convulsive  and  desperate  effort.  In  cases  where  there  is 
no  power  to  cry  out,  or  no  effort  can  be  made,  the  person  is 
overtaken,  or  falls,  and  dies  !  Eating  a  hearty  meal  at  the 
close  of  the  day  is  like  giving  a  laboring  man  a  full  day's  work 
to  do  just  as  night  sets  in,  although  he  has  been  toiling  all 
day.  The  whole  body  is  fatigued  when  night  comes ;  the 
stomach  takes  its  due  share ;  and,  to  eat  heartily  at  supper, 
and  then  go  to  bed,  is  giving  all  the  other  portions  and  func- 
tions of  the  body  repose,  while  the  stomach  has  thrown  upon 
it  five  hours  more  of  additional  labor,  after  having  already 
worked  four  or  five  hours  to  dispose  of  breakfast,  and  a  still 
longer  time  for  dinner.  This  ten  or  twelve  hours  of  almost 
incessant  labor  has  nearly  exhausted  its  power ;  it  cannot 
promptly  digest  another  full  meal,  but  labors  at  it  for  long 
hours  together,  like  an  exhausted  galley-slave  at  a  newly  im- 
posed task.  The  result  is,  that,  by  the  unnatural  length  of 
time  in  which  the  food  is  kept  in  the  stomach,  and  the  imper- 
fect manner  in  which  the  exhausted  organ  manages  it,  it 
becomes  more  or  less  acid  ;  this  generates  wind  ;  this  distends 
the  stomach ;  this  presses  itself  up  against  the  more  yielding 
lungs,  confining  them  to  a  largely  diminished  space ;  hence 
every  breath  taken  is  insufficient  for  the  wants  of  the  system, 
the  blood  becomes  foul,  black,  and  thick,  refuses  to  flow,  and 
the  man  dies,  or,  in  delirium  or  fright,  leaps  from  a  window, 
or  commits  suicide,  as  did  Hugh  Miller,  and  multitudes  of 
others,  as  to  whom  the  coroner's  jury  has  returned  the  non- 
committal verdict,  "  Died  from  causes  unknown  ;  "  if  not  more 
impiously  stating,  "  Died  by  the  visitation  of  God." 

Let  any  reader,  who  follows  an  inactive  life  for  the  most 
part,  try  the  experiment  for  a  week,  of  eating  absolutely  noth- 
ing after  a  two  o'clock  dinner,  and  see  if  a  sounder  sleep, 
and  a  more  vigorous  appetite  for  breakfast  and  a  hearty  din- 
ner are  not  the  pleasurable  results,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
happy  deliverance  from  that  disagreeable  fulness,  weight, 
oppression,  or  acidity,  which  attends  over-eatiug.  The  greater 


CAUSE  OF  CONSUMPTION.  487 

renovation  and  vivacity  which  a  long,  delicious,  and  connected 
sleep  imparts,  both  to  mind  and  body,  will,  of  themselves, 
more  than  compensate  for  the  certainly  short  and  rather  du- 
bious pleasure  of  eating  a  supper  with  no  special  relish. 


CAUSE  OF  CONSUMPTION.  . 

NOT  by  bad  colds,  nor  hereditary  predisposition,  nor  drink- 
ing liquor,  nor  tight-lacing, —  for  men  do  not  lace,  and  yet 
as  many  of  them  die  of  consumption  as  women ;  few  habitual 
drinkers  die  of  that  disease ;  and,  as  for  hereditary  taint  and 
bad  colds,  millions  of  the  latter  have  gotten  well  of  them- 
selves, while  the  naturally  feeble  are  compelled  to  an  habitual 
carefulness  of  themselves,  which  gives  them,  in  multitudes  of 
cases,  an  immunity  against  all  disease,  except  that  of  old  age. 

The  very  essence  of  consumption  is  a  decline  in  flesh. 
Flesh  is  made  of  the  food  we  eat ;  if  that  food  does  not  give 
flesh,  does  not  sustain  the  proper  proportion  of  it,  we  begin 
to  fade,  and  fail,  and  consume  away. 

But,  as  there  is  not  one  in  a  hundred  thousand  who  has  not 
a  plenty  of  food,  and  yet  one  out  of  every  nine  in  the  Union 
dies  of  consumption  every  year,  the  cause  of  that  malady  is 
not  a  want  of  food,  although  it  is  a  want  of  flesh ;  and  yet 
only  food  can  give  flesh.  It  must,  then,  be  from  the  fact, 
that,  although  we  have  a  plenty  of  food,  that  food  does  not 
give  the  amount  of  flesh  and  strength  which  it  ought  to.  The 
process  by  which  food  gives  flesh  is  a  double  one  —  digestion 
and  assimilation ;  in  other  words,  it  is  the  taking  of  the  nour- 
ishment from  the  food,  and  distributing  it  to  the  body  at 
various  points. 

The  human  body  is  much  like  a  clock  with  its  many  wheels ; 
if  one  goes  slow  the  others  go  slow,  and  bad  time  is  the  re- 
sult;  if  one  little  wheel  of  the  body  (one  organ  or  one  gland) 
works  imperfectly  or  slowly,  all  the  others  are  influenced 
thereby,  and  lag  also.  But  what  is  the  wheel  which  oftenest 
gets  out  of  gear?  It  is  the  liver.  What  infallible  telegraphic 
signal  is  always  made  when  the  liver  is  out  of  order?  It  is 
constipation  of  the  bowels  In  a  natural,  healthful  state  of  the 


488  CAUSE  OF  CONSUMPTION. 

human  body,  the  bowels  act,  at  least,  once  a  day ;  less  than 
that  is  a  certain  indication  that  the  liver  is  halting  in  its  pace, 
and,  if  the  admonition  is  allowed  to  remain  long  unheeded, 
disease  is  as  inevitable  as  the  falling  of  a  stone  when  cast 
from  the  hand.  The  moment  constipation  commences,  that 
moment  the  blood  begins  to  become  impure  and  poor ;  loses 
its  life  and  heat,  and  the  body  chills  ;  "the  least  thing  in  the 
world  "  causes  a  chill  to  run  along  the  back,  or  gives  a  cold 
outright ;  and  a  cold  being  so  easily  contracted,  before  one  is 
cured  another  comes  on,  and  that  cold  is  continued,  and  this  is 
the  synonyme  of  consumption.  This  article  might,  therefore, 
be  closed  with  the  important  practical  inference,  that,  by 
avoiding  or  correcting  constipation,  very  many  of  those  dis- 
eases might  be  avoided  or  cured  which  arise  from  impure 
blood.  But  another  step  may  be  taken  with  great  advantage. 
What  makes  the  liver  grow  slow  in  its  action  ?  what  makes  it 
torpid,  or  work  weakly? 

For  the  same  reason  that  an  overworked  horse,  or  servant, 
or  man,  becomes  slower  and  slower  in  every  motion. 

The  liver  has  a  certain  amount  of  bile  to  manufacture  every 
day.  This  bile  is  made  out  of  the  blood ;  if  that  blood  be  of 
a  good  quality  every  day,  the  work  is  regularly  performed 
and  well  done,  for  the  space  of  a  hundred  years  !  Any  me- 
chanic knows  that  it  is  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  make  a 
good  job  out  of  good  materials ;  but  to  turn  out  a  good  day's 
work  from  bad  materials  is  a  most  tiresome,  wearing,  wasting 
thing.  The  blood  becomes  of  a  bad  material  within  six  hours 
after  a  man  eats  too  much  ;  if  that  excess  is  committed  three 
times  a  day,  this  bad  blood  becomes  a  permanent  supply  in 
time;  the  liver,  for  a  while,  does  its  duty,  —  longer,  accord- 
ing to  the  greater  vigor  of  the  constitution ;  but,  sooner  or 
later,  it  lags  ;  it  is  worked  to  death.  In  the  mean  while  con- 
stipation becomes  a  habit,  and  the  work  of  death  is  done. 
But  this  curious  fact  is  not  unfrequent,  —  when  consumption 
js  fastened  on  the  lungs  by  continued  colds,  all  the  disease  of 
the  body  is,  in  a  measure,  attracted  there,  the  liver  resumes 
its  apparent  healthy  function,  and  the  bowels  remain  daily 
acting  until  death. 

Over-eating,  then,  three  times  a  day,  may  be  considered  as 
a  primary,  a  radical  cause  of  the  great  majority  of  consumptive 


BABIES.  489 

diseases,  and  each  reader  is  advised  to  take  the  matter  in  hand 
as  to  himself,  by,  — 

1.  Eating  moderately  every  day. 

2.  By  securing  a  daily  action  of  the  bowels. 

But  if  he  is  so  much  of  a  baby  —  has  so  little  self-denial  and 
manly  moral  courage,  that  he  "can't  help  eating  too  much!" 
then  an  antagonizer  of  hearty  eating  is  presented.  Work 
steadily  in  the  open  air  every  day,  from  sunrise  until  sunset, 
with  dry  feet  and  dry  clothing,  singing  or  whistling  all  the 
time. 


BABIES. 

SOME  Rev.  Benedictine  is  ventilating  himself  through  the 
papers,  on  the  subject  of  "  Baby  Talk."  He  mounts  on  stilts 
forty  feet  high,  and  then  lowers  himself  by  using  such  strong 
words  as  "detestable,"  "unjust,"  "ridiculous,"  "distorted," 
"  mangled,"  "  burlesque,"  "  barbarized,"  etc.  Now,  who  but 
a  crusty  old  "  bach  "  could  look  at  a  sweet  little  child,  and 
then  go  off  into  such  a  diarrhoea  of  sweeping  adjectives,  not  one 
of  which  can  be  thought  of  without  feelings  akin  to  those 
associated  with  a  mouthful  of  vinegar.  He  thinks  a  great 
wrong  is  done  a  little  prattler  by  teaching  it  to  say  "  Horsey," 
and  "  Mudder."  And  to  call  a  dog  "  bow-wow,"  is  awful ! 
He  is  only  mad  because  he  couldn't  raise  a  baby  himself,  and 
wants  to  put  a  "  spider  in  the  dumpling  "  of  those  who  have  a 
house  full  of  the  dear,  delightful  responsibilities.  Only  hear 
the  man  :  "  This  seems  ridiculous,  but  that  is  not  all,  it  is 
unjust  to  teach  pronunciations  which  he  must  unlearn,  as 
laboriously  as  they  were  learned.  You  thus  double  the  task. 
The  folly  and  injustice  are  the  same,  when  you  teach  a  little 
child  to  speak  a  distorted,  mangled,  burlesque  language,  of 
which,  when  older,  it  becomes  ashamed.  I  object  to  this 
clipped  and  barbarous  English,  because  it  involves  a  waste  of 
time,  and  brain-power,  and  patience."  Surely  this  man  is 
snuffing  the  wind.  He  must  have  been  in  a  highly  imagina- 
tive mood  when  he  wrote  those  lines,  or  the  east  wind  was 
blowing,  or  he  had  a  fit  of  dyspepsia.  Perhaps  he  had  just 


490  BABIES. 

received  a  "mitten."    At  all  events,  his  mental  vision  was 
considerably  obfuscated,  or  preternaturally  brightened,  since, 

"  Optics  sharp,  it  needs,  I  ween ! 
To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen." 

\Ve  indite  this  article  for  the  special  benefit  of  Babydom  for 
now  and  all  time,  and  desire  to  crush  the  error  in  the  bud ; 
and  these  are  the  reasons  :  — 

It  will  not  be  denied  that  the  most  natural  language  in  the 
world,  and  the  most  easily  learned,  is  that  whose  words  ex- 
press the  most  characteristic  quality  of  the  thing  named.  The 
rumbling  of  the  thunder,  the  hissing  of  a  snake,  the  barking 
of  a  dog,  in  the  bow-wow,  are  associated  in  name  and  nature. 
It  must  be  manyfold  easier  for  a  child  to  connect  bow-wow 
with  a  dog,  after  the  first  heard  bark,  than  with  the  word 
"dog."  It  can  see  the  connection  in  the  former  case,  and  the 
memory  is  aided  by  the  association ;  in  fact,  it  requires  but  an 
instinctive  effort  of  the  memory  ;  while  to  connect  "dog"  with 
the  noise  it  makes,  requires  an  abstract  effort  of  the  memory, 
which  is  burdensome,  and  in  mature  life  we  all  avoid  it  when 
we  can,  by  thinking  of  a  familiar  thing,  with  a  view  to  its 
connection  with  something  less  familiar,  which  is  desired  to 
be  remembered. 

The  same  may  be  said  as  to  the  word  mother.  It  is  much 
easier  for  the  lisping  child  to  say  "  mudder,"  for  it  has  not 
acquired  that  faculty  of  tongue  and  lip  movement  which  is 
necessary  to  a  distinct  pronunciation  of  the  dear  name.  In 
fact,  it  is  simply  an  impossibility  for  a  child  just  learning  to 
talk,  to  say  "  mother."  A  child  must  toddle  before  walking  ; 
it  must  also  toddle  before  talking ;  and  it  requires  no  more 
effort  to  talk  better,  than  to  walk  better ;  both  abilities  come 
to  them  so  gradually  and  so  naturally,  as  the  muscles  of  the 
parts  become  more  flexible  and  under  control,  that  in  neither 
case  is  there  a  consciousness  of  effort.  A  man  must  learn  the 
pronunciation  of  a  language  foreign  to  his  own,  whether  living 
or  dead,  by  degrees  ;  and  to  require  a  faultless  pronunciation 
from  the  first,  is  an  unnecessary  infliction  —  it  cannot  be 
done.  The  car  must  gradually  learn  the  niceties  of  pronuncia- 
tion by  frequent  hearing,  and  the  lips  and  tongue  must  be  ad- 
justed accordingly. 


HAPPY  MARRIAGES.  491 

Again,  all  languages  have  forms  of  expression  which  signify 
endearment  or  intensification.  In  the  English  it  seems  to  be  a 
kind  of  a  rhyme,  such  as  Horsey-porsy,  Piggy-wiggy,  Georgy- 
porgy,  Lijah-pygy.  Besides,  a  close  observer  may  see  that 
it  is  easier  to  pronounce  a  word  ending  with  y,  than  one 
which  has  none ;  just  as  it  is  easier  to  stop  by  degrees, 
than  short  off.  It  is  easier  to  say  Horsey,  than  a  clear,  short 
"  Horse." 

The  fact  is,  a  man  can't  talk  dictionary  himself,  without 
piling  up  the  dignity ;  and  why  should  a  parent  care  a  fig 
about  dignity,  when  he  is  melting  away  under  the  softening 
influences  of  childhood's  sunshine?  It's  only  "  stuck-up  "  peo- 
ple who  are  everlastingly  retreating  on  their  own  proprieties. 
It  requires  a  Pitt  to  play  marbles  with  his  boy  ;  a  Napoleon  to 
be  on  all-fours,  with  his  child  astride  of  his  back,  to  be  swept 
off  on  the  floor  by  the  biped  horse  running  under  the  tables. 
They  are  wise  who  can  be  children  twice ;  who  can  bend  at 
pleasure  from  age  to  infancy.  There  is  no  incompatibility  be- 
tween firmness  and  love ;  between  stately  dignity  and  an  af- 
fectionate heart.  A  parent's  presence  should  carry  with  it  the 
gladdening  sunshine,  and  not  the  chilling  iceberg.  So,  dear 
reader,  if  you  are  so  happy  as  to  have  children,  do  not  mar  it 
when  you  are  with  them,  by  mounting  stilts  or  talking  dic- 
tionary ;  throw  off  your  corsets,  make  yourself  "one  of  them," 
and  be  assured,  you  and  they  will  be  the  happier  thereby ;  the 
Rev.  J.  T.  Benedict,  D.D.,  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 


HAPPY   MARRIAGES. 

i 

ALL  sorts  of  "  old  saws  "  are  grunted  out  as  to  love  and 
marriage,  and  how  to  be  happy  in  domestic  life  ;  but  very  few 
enter  that  beatific  state,  whose  first  steps  were  taken  in 
deliberate  calculation ;  still,  it  would  be  far  better  for  all  con- 
cerned, if  these  first  steps  had  been  preceded  by  a  wise 
deliberation  and  foresight.  In  almost  all  cases,  the  first 
"bias  "  is  determined  by  some  physical  quality  —  the  face,  the 
foot,  the  ankle  ;  the  twinkle  of  the  eye,  the  dimple  of  a  cheek, 
the  lisp  of  the  tongue,  the  port  of  the  head ;  the  length,  the 


492  HAPPY  MAREIAGES. 

richness,  the  color  of  a  curl,  or  the  general  carnage  or  contour 
of  the  body.  Mental  and  high  moral  qualities  command  re- 
spect ;  and,  as  to  that  middle  ground  between  respect  and 
love,  that  is,  admiration,  it  is  excited  by  the  qualities  of  the 
heart,  such  as  frankness,  nobility  of  nature,  and  implicit  trust- 
fulness. But  for  the  kindling  up  of  real,  old-fashioned,  flam- 
ing, world-defying,  heart-breaking  love,  the  physical  prop- 
erties, in  too  many  cases,  have  the  initiating  and  predominant 
agency. 

Ill-assorted  marriages  are,  in  a  great  number  of  instances, 
the  result  of  parental  remissness,  in  not  beginning  early 
enough  to  instil  into  the  mind  of  the  child  such  an  aversion 
to  certain  traits  of  character,  and  such  a  high  estimate  of 
certain  moral  qualities,  as  a  true  wisdom  would  dictate  in  the 
premises. 

It  certainly  is  not  an  impossible  thing  to  impress  the  youth- 
ful mind  with  an  unconquerable  repugnance  against  a  char- 
acter, the  most  striking  trait  of  which  is  a  contemptible  trick- 
ery, an  abhorrent  profanity,  a  little-souled  meanness,  or  a 
degrading  animalism.  Just  as  well  may  the  young  heart  be 
fortified  against  loving  the  miser,  the  spendthrift,  and  the 
gamester,  —  against  those  whose  prominent  exhibitions  de- 
monstrate an  irascibility,  an  all-absorbing  selfishness  or  stony- 
heartedness ;  or  a  contempt  of  honest  labor,  of  religion,  or  of 
pecuniary  obligation.  While  our  children  may  be  early  taught 
an  aversion  to  such  traits  of  character,  their  admiration  may 
be  cultivated  for  all  that  is  manly,  and  honorable,  and  self- 
sacrificing  ;  for  all  that  is  true,  and  pure,  and  generous ;  for 
all  who  are  industrious,  diligent,  and  economical. 

It  is  unwise  to  hope  for  domestic  happiness  in  the  posses- 
sion of  a  single  favorable  trait  of  character ;  it  is  better  to 
look  for  a  combination,  and  they  are  to  be  most  congratulated 
who  can  discern,  and  woo,  and  win  the  possessor  of  the  largest 
number  of  good  points.  First  of  all,  the  man  whom  you  love, 
the  woman  whom  you  adore,  should  possess  a  high  sense  of 
right  and  wrong ;  next,  bodily  health  ;  and,  thirdly,  moral 
bravery,  — a  courage  to  be  industrious,  economical,  and  self- 
denying.  With  these  three  traits,  —  principle,  health,  and  a 
soul  that  can  do  and  dare  all  that  one  ought  to,  —  domestic  feli- 
city will  abide.  None  ought  to  marry  who  cannot  command  the 


PRINTERS'  DISEASES.  493 

means  of  enabling  them  to  live  in  comfort  according  to  their 
station  in  life,  without  grinding  economies. 

It  is  useless  to  talk  about  love  in  a  cottage.  The  little  ras- 
cal always  runs  away  when  there  is  no  bread  and  butter  on 
the  table.  There  is  more  love  in  a  full  flour-barrel  than  in  all 
the  roses  and  posies  and  woodbines  that  ever  grew. 

No  mechanic  should  marry  until  he  is  master  of  his  trade ; 
nor  a  professional  man,  until  his  income  is  adequate  to  the 
style  of  life  which  he  determines  upon ;  nor  the  merchant, 
until  his  clear  annual  gains  are  equal  to  his  domestic  expendi- 
tures, unless,  indeed,  there  are,  in  either  case,  independent 
and  unconditional  sources  of  income. 

No  man  ought  to  marry  who  has  to  work  like  a  horse  from 
morning  until  night  to  supply  family  necessaries,  whether  it 
be  by  brain  or  body ;  for,  if  the  body  is  thus  made  a  drudge 
of,  it  perpetuates  impaired  power  to  the  race ;  while,  if  the 
brain  is  overwrought,  its  effects  will  be  seen  in  children  of 
feeble  intellect,  if,  indeed,  they  be  not  demented.  To  calcu- 
late, therefore,  on  a  reasonable  share  of  domestic  enjoyment, 
the  parties  most  interested  should  aim  to  find  in  each  other 
as  great  an  amount  as  may  be  of  high  moral  principle,  of 
bodily  health,  and  either  the  actual  possession  of  a  suitable 
maintenance,  or  an  individual  ability  to  secure  it  without  per- 
adveuture. 


PRINTERS'  DISEASES. 

MANY  printers  are  in  the  habit  of  holding  types  between 
their  teeth.  When  the  types  are  damp,  and  especially  when 
they  are  new,  a  substance  is  upon  their  surface,  which,  when 
applied  to  the  lips,  causes  troublesome  fissures,  which  some- 
times end  in  incurable  cancers,  which  eat  away  life  by  piece- 
meals, in  the  slow  process  of  weary  months. 

This  same  substance  sometimes  finds  its  way  to  the  inner 
side  of  the  lips  by  means  of  the  tongue  and  the  saliva,  causing 
troublesome  tumors,  which  inflame,  ulcerate,  and  rapidly  as- 
sume the  form  of  torturing  cancer.  The  only  remedy  is 
prevention,  by  keeping  the  type  out  of  the  mouth.  The  most 
common  of  all  diseases  among  printers  are  those  of  the  air- 


494  THE  TWO  BEST  DOCTORS. 

passages,  of  which  bronchitis  is  the  most  frequent.  Next  to 
that,  inflammation  of  the  lungs  and  consumption,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  bent  position  of  their  bodies,  which  prevents 
full,  deep  breathing,  when  the  lungs,  from  inaction,  become 
debilitated,  and  unable  to  resist  impressions  from  cold,  to 
which  printers  are  so  liable,  in  consequence  of  their  rooms 
being  kept  very  warm,  and  their  inattention  to  proper  rules 
when  they  leave  them.  Being  so  much  in  the  composing- 
room,  they  become  forgetful  of  the  cold  without,  and,  at  the 
close  of  the  day,  in  that  tired,  weary  condition  that  follows 
a  ten  hours'  labor,  they  come  out  on  the  street,  stand  around 
the  office-doors  talking  with  one  another  and  looking  around, 
and,  before  they  are  aware  of  it,  they  are  often  chilled  through, 
and  thus,  through  mere  inattention,  the  foundation  is  laid  for 
the  fatal  ailments  enumerated.  Nearly  one  fourth  of  printers 
die  of  consumptive  forms  of  disease.  Hernia  is  common,  es- 
pecially among  pressmen.  Dimness  of  sight,  shortsighted- 
ness, and  weakness  of  eyes  are  very  common,  in  consequence 
of  the  constant  strain  on  that  organ,  and  its  exposure  to  arti- 
ficial light.  Fissures  and  hard  lumps  often  form  on  the  fore- 
finger and  thumb  of  the  right  hand,  from  handling  damp  type. 
But  the  great  disease  which  sweeps  so  many  of  them  into  a 
premature  grave  is  consumption ;  but  which  would  not  occur 
with  a  tithe  of  the  frequency,  if  the  following  few  precautions 
were  habitually  taken  :  — 

First,  regularity  in  eating  and  in  bodily  habits.  Second, 
put  on  all  the  extra  clothing  before  going  into  the  street ; 
avoid  stopping  an  instant,  but  move  on  at  a  brisk  pace,  with 
the  mouth  closed,  so  that,  instead  of  a  dash  of  cold  air  going 
in  upon  the  lungs,  at  each  breath,  to"  chill  them,  it  may  be 
first  warmed  by  being  compelled  to  pass  around  through  the 
nostrils. 


THE  TWO  BEST  DOCTORS. 

FOR  all  minor  aches  and  ails,  Dr.  Letalone  is  the  most  uni- 
formly and  happily  successful  physician  I  ever  knew ;  but,  in 
the  severer  forms  of  disease,  it  is  always  wisest,  safest,  and 
best,  to  seek,  promptly,  the  advice  of  an  educated  practitioner  ; 


RESTLESS   WANDERERS.  495 

and  a  fortunate  thing  would  it  be  for  humanity,  if  not  an  atom 
or  a  drop  of  physic  were  ever  taken,  unless  specially  pre- 
scribed by  those  who  had  the  advantage  of  a  thorough  medical 
education. 


RESTLESS  WANDERERS. 

WE  are  moved  to  pity  many  times  in  meeting  with  a  class 
of  men  who  are  seeking  for,  they  know  not  what.  They  see 
evil  in  the  world,  and  sorrow ;  they  see  oppression  and  deg- 
radation, and,  while  observing  them,  feel  the  more,  in  that 
they  have  experiences  in  the  same  directions, —  tearful,  bitter, 
almost  heart-breaking  experiences,  it  may  be ;  and  in  blind- 
ness and  powerlessness,  they  are  groping  about  wearily  and 
painfully  for  a  remedy. 

In  all  these,  not  a  single  man  or  woman  is  found  who  does 
not  begin  by  attacking  the  present  system  of  received  religion. 
Most  of  them  persuade  themselves  that  they  believe  the  Bible, 
and  readily  refer  to  it  as  confirmatory  of  their  peculiar  sys- 
tems ;  but,  in  every  case,  they  will  only  consent  that  the  holy 
book  shall  be  interpreted  according  to  some  preconceived 
views  of  their  own.  They  are  quite  willing  to  make  the  Bi- 
ble their  arbiter,  the  tribunal  of  last  resort,  but  then  they 
insist  that  they  must  have  the  interpretation  of  its  meaning. 
Yet,  with  all  this,  they  are  dissatisfied  and  unhappy ;  there  is 
a  feeling  of  unrest  which  is  devouring  them,  and  they  will 
talk,  ad  infinitum,  to  everybody,  inferring,  from  admissions 
of  the  occasional  good  sentiments  which  they  avow,  a  more 
or  less  implied  assent  to  their  whole  system ;  and  drawing 
some  comfort  therefrom,  they  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that 
the  whole  world  is  rapidly  falling  into  their  views  ;  and  soon 
fanaticism  assumes  its  sway,  to  hurry  them  to  still  greater 
extremes,  until  they  are  dashed  on  the  rocks  of  suicide,  of 
lunacy,  or  of  perdition. 

All  these  people  look  sad ;  they  are  extremely  excitable  ; 
they  fire  up  on  the  instant ;  and,  in  all,  we  never  fail  to  see 
a  degree  of  bitterness  towards  opponents,  and  especially  is 
a  bitterness  exhibited  towards  ministers,  and  churches,  and 
communities,  in  proportion  as  these  appear  thriving,  prosper- 


496  ODORIFEROUS  FEET. 

ous,  and  happy.  Nor  is  this  all ;  the  rich  are  their  universal 
anvil ;  on  it  they  pound  most  mercilessly.  With  them,  the 
selfishness  of  the  rich  is  an  exhaustless  theme ;  or,  if  they 
ever  come  to  a  conclusion,  it  is  this,  that  if  these  same  rich 
people  would  commit  the  distribution  of  their  property  to 
them,  the  millennium  would  come  in  a  very  few  days  ;  and, 
while  handling  the  money  which  they  never  had  the  capachy 
to  earn  or  keep,  they  would  be  the  happiest  people  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,  and  would  thence  assume  that  everybody 
else  was  prosperous  and  happy  too ;  just  as,  a  short  time  be- 
fore, they  had  concluded  that  everybody  was  poor,  and 
wretched,  and  miserable,  because  they  were  so  themselves. 

We  earnestly  counsel  any  chance  reader  of  this  article,  who 
has  no  heart- warming  and  cheerful  religious  faith  of  his  own, 
to  disabuse  himself  of  the  notion  that  the  whole  world  is  go- 
ing wrong,  by  simply  taking  a  general,  generous,  and  liberal 
view  of  any  evangelical  denomination  of  Christians,  and  note 
for  himself,  in  conversation  with  any  considerable  number  of 
them,  if  there  is  not  a  most  implicit  faith  in  the  great  general 
doctrines  of  religion,  of  repentance,  faith,  and  a  new  life  ;  of 
the  forgiveness  of  sins,  of  spiritual  holification,  of  a  Saviour 
born,  and  of  final  restoration  to  the  bosom  of  the  great  Father 
of  us  all.  They  feel  no  more  doubt  of  these  things  than  they 
do  of  the  shining  of  the  sun  on  a  cloudless  day ;  and  more, 
they  are  humble  in  that  belief  as  to  themselves,  and  merciful, 
and  loving,  and  forbearing  as  to  others  Avho  are  out  of  their 
faith,  in  that  they  spend  their  time  and  their  money  cheerfully, 
gladly,  if,  by  any  means,  they  can  bring  others  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  great  salvation ;  and,  withal,  they  are  happy  in 
their  faith,  happy  in  their  hope,  happy  in  their  labors,  and 
happy  in  their  liberalities.  Restless  wanderers  !  if  you  will 
not  believe  this,  "  COME  AND  SEE." 


ODORIFEROUS  FEET. 

THAT  an  odor  issues  from  every  person,  peculiar  to  him- 
self, is  proven  by  the  fact  that  the  dog  can  find  his  master,  al- 
though out  of  sight ;  but  this  emanation  from  the  body  is  so 
ethereal,  generally,  that  the  human  sense  of  smell  cannot  dis- 


BLEEPING  POSITION.  497 

tinguish  it.  In  very  rare  instances  the  calamity  may  be 
inherited,  or  may  arise  from  a  scrofulous  constitution.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  true,  that  in  almost  every  case,  bad-smelling 
feet,  or  person,  arises  from  old  perspiration  in  a  decaying  con- 
dition. There  is  no  special  odor  to  the  perspiration  from  the 
hands.  It  is  because  they  are  constantly  exposed  to  the  air, 
and  are  frequently  washed  and  ventilated ;  and  so  with  the 
face.  It  is  from  the  feet,  always  covered  ;  from  the  arm-pits, 
seldom  washed ;  and  from  the  groins,  always  in  a  perspiring 
condition,  that  fetid  odors  come.  The  remedy,  then,  is  the 
plentiful  and  frequent  application  of  soap  and  hot  water,  twice 
a  day,  as  long  as  needed.  This  may  not  avail  sometimes ; 
especially  with  men,  for  many  keep  their  boots  on  the  whole 
day ;  the  perspiration  of  the  feet  condenses  on  them,  decom- 
poses, and  the  gas  given  out  is  absorbed  by  the  leather,  and 
remains  permanently.  In  such  cases,  not  only  is  the  strictest 
personal  cleanliness  necessary,  the  toes  and  nails  being  very 
particularly  attended  to,  but  shoes  should  be  worn  to  allow 
of  a  more  free  escape  of  gases  ;  they  should  be  changed  every 
day  ;  and  when  not  on  the  feet,  should  be  exposed  to  the  out- 
door air,  so  as  to  have  a  most  thorough  ventilation. 

"  Aqua  Ammonia  "  (Hartshorn  water)  is  used  by  some  for 
the  removal  of  unpleasant  personal  odors ;  but  it  has  one  of 
its  own  scarcely  more  agreeable,  and  perhaps  it  acts  only  by 
having  a  stronger  smell.  The  most  efficient  plan  is  attention 
to  the  strictest  cleanliness,  and  the  use  of  shoes,  as  above  ;  and 
if,  in  addition,  a  high  state  of  general  health  is  maintained,  by 
temperance  and  exercise  out  of  doors  several  hours  daily,  the 
most  inveterate  fetors  will  seldom  fail  of  removal. 


SLEEPING  POSITION. 

THE  food  passes  from  the  stomach  at  the  right  side,  hence 
its  passage  is  facilitated  by  going  to  sleep  on  the  right  side. 
Water  and  other  fluids  flow  equably  on  a  level,  and  it  requires 
less  power  to  propel  them  on  a  level  than  upwards.  The 
heart  propels  the  blood  to  every  part  of  the  body  at  each  suc- 
cessive beat,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that,  if  the  body  is  in  u 


498  FABMERS  AND   CITIZENS. 

horizontal  position,  the  blood  will  be  sent  to  the  various  parts 
of  the  system  Avith  greater  ease,  with  less  expenditure  of 
power,  and  more  perfectly,  than  could  possibly  be  done  if  one 
portion  of  the  body  were  elevated  above  a  horizontal  line.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  one  portion  of  the  body  is  too  low,  the  blood 
does  not  return  as  readily  as  it  is  carried  thither ;  hence,  there 
is  an  accumulation  and  distention,  and  pain  soon  follows.  If  a 
person  goes  to  sleep  with  the  head  but  a  very  little  lower  than 
the  body,  he  will  either  soon  waken  up,  or  will  die  with  apo- 
plexy before  the  morning,  simply  because  the  blood  could  not 
get  back  from  the  brain  as  fast  as  it  was  carried  to  it.  If  a  per- 
son lays  himself  down  on  a  level  floor  for  sleep,  a  portion  of 
the  head,  at  least,  is  lower  than  the  heart,  and  discomfort  is 
soon  induced  ;  hence,  very  properly,  the  world  over,  the  head 
is  elevated  during  sleep.  The  savage  uses  a  log  of  wood  or  a 
bunch  of  leaves  ;  the  civilized,  a  pillow  ;  and  if  this  pillow  is 
too  thick,  raising  the  head  too  high,  there  is  not  blood  enough 
carried  to  the  brain  ;  and  as  the  brain  is  nourished,  and  invig- 
orated by  the  nutriment  it  receives  from  the  blood  during 
sleep,  it  is  not  fed  sufficiently,  and  the  result  is  unquiet  sleep 
during  the  night,  and  a  waking  up  in  weariness,  without  refresh- 
ment, to  be  followed  by  a  day  of  drowsiness,  discomfort,  and 
general  inactivity  of  both  mind  and  body.  The  healthful  mean 
is  a  pillow,  which,  by  the  pressure  of  the  head,  keeps  it  about 
four  inches  above  the  level  of  the  bed  or  mattress  ;  nor  should 
the  pillow  be  so  soft  as  to  allow  the  head  to  be  buried  in  it, 
and  excite  perspiration,  endangering  earache,  or  cold  in  the 
head,  on  turning  over.  The  pillow  should  be  hard  enough  to 
prevent  the  head  sinking  more  than  about  three  inches. 


FARMERS  AND  CITIZENS. 

AN  extended  series  of  observations  seems  to  have  war- 
ranted two  conclusions,  both  adverse  to  commonly  received 
opinions :  — 

1.  There  are  more  persons  in  lunatic  asylums  from  the  coun- 
try than  from  the  town. 

2.  The  average  of  human  life  is  greater  in  the  largest  cities, 


FARMERS  AND   CITIZENS.  499 

• 

than  in  the  country  adjoining;  yet  farmers  eat  plain,  fresh 
food,  take  abundant  exercise,  retire  early,  and  get  up  by  day- 
light, breathing  the  pure  out-door  air  for  at  least  half  their 
existence.  On  the  other  hand,  citizens  retire  late,  rise  late, 
eat  food  and  fruits  one,  two,  or  a  dozen  days  old ;  are  in- 
doors three  fourths,  if  not  nine  tenths  of  their  time,  breathing 
an  air  vitiated  by  furnace-heat  and  a  variety  of  other  causes, 
and  take  comparatively  little  exercise. 

It  is  practically  useful  to  note  some  of  the  general  reasons 
which  may  very  rationally  be  considered  as  explanatory  of 
such  results. 

The  universal  tendency  of  concentration  of  thought  upon 
one  subject  is  to  monomania,  madness ;  this  is  so  palpable  a 
fact,  that  argument  is  not  necessary.  When,  therefore,  the 
subjects  of  thought  are  few  in  number,  this  same  tendency 
exists.  The  weather,  the  crops,  the  market,  is  the  idol  trinity 
of  most  farmers ;  in  a  wide  sense,  they  think,  talk,  dream 
about  nothing  else  with  any  special  interest ;  all  besides  is 
secondary,  and  if  by  any  novelty  the  mind  is  compelled  out 
of  its  wonted  track,  it  soon  relapses  into  the  old  tread-mill 
circle,  into  the  same  rut  of  ages  gone.  In  great  cities  this 
destructive  concentration  is  almost  an  impossibility  ;  the  morn- 
ing papers,  the  prices  current,  the  stock-markets,  the  acci- 
dents, the  wars  of  nations,  the  exhibitions  of  curious  and 
stirring  things,  keep  the  mind  on  the  look-out ;  in  fact,  almost 
too  active  ;  there  is  scarcely  enough  time  for  needed  rest. 
The  day  begins  with  running  over  the  state  of  the  world,  as 
exhibited  in  the  newspaper.  From  nine  until  four  the  whole 
mind  is  absorbed  in  matters  of  business  ;  from  that  until  near 
midnight,  there  is  a  comparative  abandon  to  dinner,  to  social 
ties,  to  giving  or  receiving  visits  from  acquaintances,  friends, 
and  kindred ;  in  going  to  the  concert,  the  lecture,  the  opera, 
to  evening  parties,  or  other  sources  of  agreeable  diversions,  or 
profitable  intercommunions. 

The  farmer,  glorying  in  his  health  and  strength,  thinks  his 
constitution  impregnable ;  scouts  at  method,  and  system,  and 
precaution,  considering  them  as  nothing  but  doctors'  whims 
and  old  women's  notions.  He  believes  in  eating  hearty  sup- 
pers, and  late ;  he  has  done  it  all  his  life,  and  is  not  dead  yet, 
and  resolves  so  to  continue  until  the  end  of  the  chapter-when 


500  FARMERS  AND   CITIZENS. 

some  morning  the  news  goes  round,  "Died  last  night"  of 
apoplexy,  cholera  rnorbus,  cramp  colic,  or  the  like.  At  other 
times  bilious  fever  carries  him  from  health  to  the  grave  in  ten 
days,  in  consequence  of  going  to  sleep  in  the  entry  or  on  the 
front  stoop  after  a  hard  day's  work ;  or  he  brings  on  some 
other  malady  by  damp  feet,  bad  cookery,  neglecting  the  calls 
of  nature,  or  deliberately  postponing  them.  The  citizen,  on 
the  contrary,  has  more  or  less  informed  himself  on  these  mat- 
ters, both  by  reading  and  observation  ;  he  is  compelled  to  pay 
deference  to  nature's  laws ;  he  knows  that  their  infraction  is 
attended  with  certain  penalties,  and  his  better  judgment  leads 
him  to  estimate  properly  the  value  of  a  wise  course  of  life ; 
while  all  the  time  he  is  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  encoun- 
tering great  exposure  to  heat  and  cold,  of  excessive  and  ex- 
hausting physical  efforts,  which  accidents  and  the  hurry  of  the 
seasons  impose  on  those  who  cultivate  the  soil. 

Farmers  will  become  healthier  in  body  and>n  mind,  in  pro- 
portion as  agricultural  papers  are  taken,  for  several  reasons  : 
these  publications  uniformly  contain  a  large  amount  of  unex- 
ceptionable family  reading,  as  to  health,  temperance,  and 
sound  morals ;  they  will  also  gradually  waken  up  the  mind  of 
farming  people  to  experiments,  to  what  is  often  sneeringly 
styled  "  scientific  farming."  Every  day  the  helter-skelter 
mode  of  agriculture  is  becoming  less  and  less  remunerative  ; 
every  day  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  necessary  to  study 
the  laws  of  vegetable  growth,  the  habitudes  and  needs  of 
plants,  and  grains,  and  trees ;  and  in  proportion  as  this  is 
done,  and  the  analysis  of  soils  becomes  an  indispensable  pre- 
requisite, there  will  be  a  world  of  novelty  and  light  to  break 
in  upon  the  farming  mind  to  interest,  electrify,  and  enrich. 
The  time  will  come  when  to  attempt  the  successful  manage- 
jnent  of  a  farm,  large  or  small,  without  some  considerable 
practical  knowledge  of  chemistry,  and  botany,  and  geology, 
will  be  considered  the  extreme  of  Quixotism.  Meanwhile,  let 
farmers  and  farmers'  wives,  with  their  children,  bear  in  mind 
that,  to  diminish  the  chances  of  a  dyspeptic  or  bilious  madness, 
or  a  premature  death  from  acute  disease,  they  should  practise 
habits  of  personal  cleanliness  and  bodily  regularity ;  should 
eat  only  at  regular  hours,  not  oftener  than  thrice  a  day,  and 
never  between  meals,  swallowing  not  an  atom  after  sundown ; 


A  DANGEROUS  CURIOSITY.  501 

eat  always  slowly  and  with  great  deliberation ;  take  nothing 
for  the  last  meal  of  the  day  beyond  some  cold  bread  and  butter 
and  a  single  cup  of  water  or  warm  drink,  so  as  to  throw  the 
main  meal  to  breakfast  or  dinner,  thus  having  all  the  exercise 
of  the  day  to  w  grind  it  up,"  to  convert  it  into  healthful  nutri- 
ment. Avoid  damp  clothing,  and  cold  or  wet  feet ;  keep  out 
of  even  the  slightest  draught  of  air  after  all  forms  of  exercise  ; 
and  all  the  while  practise,  as  to  the  body,  regularity,  tem- 
perance, and  self-denial ;  while,  as  to  the  mind,  cultivate  a 
cheerful  spirit,  a  courteous  temper,  and  a  loving  heart.  The 
great  general  idea  is  this,  that  as  between  farmers  and  citizens 
of  the  largest  cities,  the  chances  are  in  favor  of  the  latter  as  to 
length  of  life  and  mental  integrity ;  that  less  bodily  exercise 
and  more  mental  activity  bring  better  results  in  the  long  run, 
than  more  exercise  and  less  mental  activities ;  that  what  tends 
to  waken  up  and  divert  the  attention,  is  quite  as  indispensable 
to  our  well-being  as  bodily  activities. 


A  DANGEROUS  CURIOSITY. 

IT  is  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world,  when  you  have 
gone  to  bed,  to  get  up,  run  to  the  window,  hoist  it  and  look 
out,  at  an  alarm  of  fire  or  any  unusual  noise  or  clamor  going 
on  outside.  A  lady  was  roused  from  her  sleep  by  a  cry  of 
"  Fire  1  "  Her  chamber  was  as  bright  almost  as  day  when  she 
opened  her  eyes.  She  went  to  the  window,  and  soon  saw  that 
it  was  her  husband's  cotton  factory.  She  felt  on  the  instant  a 
shock  at  the  pit  of  the  stomach ;  the  result  was  a  painful 
disease,  which  troubled  her  for  the  remainder  of  her  life,  a 
period  of  nearly  fifteen  years. 

A  young  lady,  just  budding  into  womanhood,  was  called  by 
the  sound  of  midnight  music  to  the  window,  and  in  her  un- 
dress leaned  her  arm  on  the  cold  sill ;  the  next  day  she  had  an 
attack  of  inflammation  of  the  lungs  which  nearly  killed  her. 
She  eventually  recovered,  only  to  be  the  victim  of  a  life-long 
asthma,  the  horrible  suffering  from  the  oft-repeated  attacks  of 
which,  during  now  these  twenty  years,  is  the  painful  penalty, 
to  be  paid  over  and  over  again  as  long  as  life  lasts. 


502  TRIALS  OF  LIFE. 

A  letter  just  received  from  a  successful  banker,  who  has 
been  an  invalid  for  five  years,  every  now  and  then  spitting 
blood  by  the  pint,  with  a  harassing  cough  which  makes  every 
night  and  morning  a  purgatory,  states  that  the  immediate 
cause  of  all  his  sufferings,  and  the  final  blasting  of  life's  pros- 
pects, was  his  getting  up  on  a  cool  night  to  look  out  of  his 
chamber  window,  his  body  being  in  a  perspiration  at  the  time. 
That  sturdy  old  Trojan,  Dr.  Johnson,  used  to  say,  that  "man- 
kind did  not  so  much  require  instructing  as  reminding ;  " 
hence  the  present  reminder,  that  it  is  dangerous  for  people  to 
be  poking  their  nightcaps  out  of  windows  after  nightfall. 
Another  mischievous  habit,  in  the  same  direction,  may  have 
pertinent  mention  here  :  standing  in  the  street  doorway  in 
cold  weather,  while  the  door  itself  is  open,  in  taking  leave  of 
visitors.  The  cold  air  from  without  rushes  into  the  dwelling, 
causing  a  draught,  which  chills  the  whole  body  almost  instant- 
ly. It  is  a  hundred  times  safer  to  close  the  door  and  stand 
without,  bareheaded.  Many  a  tedious  case  of  sickness  and 
suffering  has  been  occasioned,  and  even  life  itself  has  been 
lost,  by  an  exposure  apparently  so  trifling.  May  our  readers 
remember  these  things,  and  teach  them  to  their  children  on 
the  instant. 


TRIALS  OF  LIFE. 

WE  start  upon  life's  journey  full  of  hope,  full  of  gladness, 
and  full  of  joyous  ambition,  confident  in  our  own  strength  and 
in  the  support  of  friends  and  kindred  stationed  round  about  us, 
on  whom  we  lean  with  great  satisfaction  ;  but  as  years  pass  on, 
one  of  the  outposts,  the  supports,  falls  ;  and  then  another  and  an- 
other, each  succeeding  year,  leaving  one  or  more  the  less.  For 
a  while  we  scarcely  miss  the  acquaintances  and  friends  of  our 
childhood,  for  we  have  so  many  ;  but  as  time  rolls  on,  the  num- 
ber becomes  so  small  that  each  additional  loss  makes  a  greater 
void.  Father,  mother,  brothers,  sisters,  our  oldest  neighbors, 
all  gone  ;  the  minister  of  our  youth  has  grown  gray  before  us, 
—  he,  too,  has  passed  away ;  and  beyond  a  schoolmate  here, 
and  another  there,  nothing  is  left  to  connect  us  with  the  times 
and  the  home  of  childhood,  and  such  a  feeling  of  desolation 


SPRING   SUGGESTIONS.  503 

comes  over  us,  that  we  are  ready  to  sink  ill  perfect  helpless- 
ness and  despair.  To  the  old  who  uiay  chance  to  read  these 
lines,  the  suggestion  is  made,  which,  if  wisely  heeded,  may 
save  the  body  from  sinking  under  the  whelming  load,  and  it 
is  this :  He  who  made  us  is  the  Father  of  us  all ;  and  the 
dispensations  of  this  life  are  designed  to  prepare  us  the  more 
certainly  for  a  beatific  existence  beyond  the  grave,  and  to  en- 
able us  to  make  the  transition  with  the  least  violence  ;  and,  at 
the  same  time,  to  train  us  to  those  habitudes  of  heart  which 
will  the  more  elevate  us  in  the  world  beyond,  he  arranges  that 
we  shall  learn  to  lean  less  on  ourselves,  less  on  others,  and 
more  on  himself,  as  a  weary  man  leans  on  a  staff;  and  the 
sooner  we  begin  to  learn  thus  to  lean,  the  happier  we  shall  be 
in  time,  and  the  more  ready  shall  we  find  ourselves  to  take  up 
the  returnless  journey,  without  a  murmur  and  without  a  sigh. 
There  are  no  words  more  beautiful  and  more  true,  in  any  lan- 
guage, than  that  "  GOD  is  LOVE  "  to  all  his  true  children  ;  and 
the  longer  they  live,  the  more  constantly  does  he  gather  him- 
self about  them  with  his  providences,  not,  certainly,  in  the 
way  that  man's  wisdom  would  devise,  but  in  the  manner  most 
surely  to  eventuate  in  their  safe  arrival  at  their  heavenly 
home.  So  that,  while  it  is  natural  that  we  should  feel  the 
death  of  those  who  are  near  to  us  more  and  more  acutely  the 
older  we  grow,  we  should  gain  even  physical  power  to  resist 
the  most  .crushing  trials  in  the  sweet  reflection,  that  behind 
the  darkest  cloud  a  loving  Father  hides  a  face  all  radiant 
with  pity,  sympathy,  and  affection,  to  be  shown  in  due  time, 
when  faith  has  done  its  perfect  work.  So  that,  for  life's  suf- 
ferings, there  is  a  balm  in  Gilead,  there  is  a  Physician  there  ! 


SPRING  SUGGESTIONS. 

Do  not  take  off  your  winter  flannel  sooner  than  the  first  of 
May,  but  then  change  to  a  thinner  article  of  the  same  material. 
They  are  wisest  and  healthiest  who  wear  woollen  flannel  the 
whole  year.  Sailors  wear  it  in  all  latitudes  and  all  seasons. 
Arrange  to  have  a  fire  kept  up  all  day  in  the  family  room, 
however  warm  it  may  be  out  of  doors,  until  the  first  of  May  ; 


504  SPUING  SUGGESTIONS. 

and  in  the  morning  and  evening,  daily,  until  the  first  of  June. 
The  author  has  lived  in  the  most  malarial  region  in  the  world, 
perhaps,  and  when  the  thermometer  was  a  hundred  and 
twelve  at  noon,  a  fire  was  regularly  kindled  at  sunrise  and 
sunset  in  his  office,  and  sat  by.  Disease,  malignant  fever, 
and  death  reigned  in  every  direction,  and  yet  he  had  not  a 
second's  sickness.  It  is  because  a  brisk  fire  not  only  creates 
a  draught,  and  thus  purifies  a  room,  but  so  rarifies  the  deadly 
air  that  it  is  carried  to  the  ceiling,  where  it  cannot  be  breathed. 
The  simple  precaution  of  having  a  fire  kindled  in  the  family 
room  at  sunrise  and  sunset,  in  late  spring  and  early  fall,  is 
known  by  eminent  names  in  the  army  and  navy  surgery  to  be 
the  most  efficient  preventive  of  all  forms  of  fever  and  ague, 
and  spring  and  fall  diseases ;  in  flat,  wet,  warm  countries,  it 
is  almost  a  specific  against  those  diseases.  No  man  would  be 
considered  sane  who  should  keep  up  as  hot  fires  in  his  house 
as  the  spring  advances  as  he  did  in  midwinter.  Food  is  the 
fuel  which  keeps  the  human  house  —  the  body  —  warm ; 
hence,  if  as  much  is  eaten  in  spring  as  in  winter,  we  are  kept 
too  warm ;  we  burn  up  with  fever ;  we  are  oppressed ;  we 
suffer  from  lassitude.  All  nature  takes  a  new  lease  of  life 
with  spring  but  man.  It  is  because  he  alone  is  unwise. 
The  brute  beasts,  —  the  cow,  the  horse,  the  ox,  —  these  turn 
to  a  new  diet  and  go  out  to  grass,  to  crop  every  green  thing ; 
they  would  never  come  to  the  stable  or  barnyard  of  choice, 
to  eat  the  "  heating,"  "  binding  "  oats  and  corn  on  which  they 
luxuriated  during  the  winter;  they  eat  watery  food,  which  is 
light  and  purifying. 

Not  so  with  man ;  he  continues  his  meats  and  fats,  his 
greases  and  his  gravies,  as  at  Christinas.  Watchful  nature 
takes  away  his  appetite  for  these,  and  because  he  does  not 
"  relish  "  them  as  he  did  a  few  weeks  before,  he  begins  to  con- 
clude that  something  is  the  matter,  and  measuring  the  amount 
of  his  health  by  the  amount  he  can  send  down  his  throat,  he 
begins  to  stimulate  the  appetite,  thinks  he  must  use  some 
tonic,  readily  assents  to  any  suggestion  which  includes  bitters 
and  whiskey,  especially  the  latter ;  in  addition,  he  puts  more 
mustard,  and  pepper,  and  catsup  on  his  meats,  seasons  every- 
thing more  heavily,  until  nature  has  been  goaded  so  that  she 
will  bear  no  more,  and  yields  to  the  fatal  dysentery  or  bilious 


SPRING   SUGGESTIONS.  505 

colic,  or,  happily,  relieves  herself  by  a  copious  diarrhoea. 
Does  not  every  reader  know  that  fever,  and  flux,  and  diarrhoea 
are  common  ails  of  spring?  But  you  did  not  know  one  of 
the  two  chief  causes,  man's  gluttony,  as  above  described  ! 
Tens  of  thousands  of  lives  would  be  saved  every  spring,  and 
an  incalculable  amount  of  human  discomfort  would  be  pre- 
vented, if,  early  in  March,  or,  at  most,  by  the  first  of  April, 
meat,  and  grease,  and  fried  food  of  every  description,  were 
banished  from  the  table  wholly,  at  least  for  breakfast  and 
supper.  If  meat  will  be  eaten  for  dinner,  let  it  be  lean  ;  use 
hominy  and  "  samp  "  largely  ;  have  no  fries,  eat  but  little  but- 
ter ;  use  eggs,  celery,  spinach,  vinegar ;  keep  the  body  clean  ; 
spend  every  hour  possible  in  the  open  air,  snuffing  in  the 
spring  ;  but  by  every  consideration  of  wisdom  and  of  health, 
have  a  good  fire  to  come  to  and  sit  by  with  all  your  garments 
on,  for  eight  or  ten  minutes  after  all  forms  of  exercise  ;  other- 
wise, you  will  wake  up  next  morning  as  stiff  as  a  bean-pole, 
and  as  "  sore  "  as  if  you  had  been  pounded  in  a  bag,  to  the 
effect  of  your  exercise  having  done  you  more  harm  than  good  ; 
and,  concluding  that  work  don't  agree  with  you,  however 
beneficial  it  may  be  to  others,  you  take  no  more  for  weeks  and 
months.  Man  is,  certainly,  the  biggest  mule  that  ever  was 
created. 

For  the  sake  of  giving  some  general  idea  as  to  how  much 
sedentary  persons  should  eat  in  spring,  particularly  those  who 
are  most  of  the  time  indoors,  it  may  be  well  to  name  the  bill 
of  fare.  At  breakfast,  take  a  single  cup  of  weak  coffee  or  tea, 
some  cold  bread  and  butter,  with  one  or  two  soft-boiled  eggs, 
and  nothing  else.  Twice  a  bit  of  ham  or  salt  fish  may  be  used 
in  place  of  the  eggs ;  but  then  no  meat  should  be  eaten  for 
dinner  that  day.  If  there  is  no  appetite  for  eggs  or  the  salt 
meat,  it  is  because  nature  needs  nothing  more  than  the  bread 
and  butter  and  the  drink ;  and  nature  is  wise.  When  there 
is  not  much  inclination  to  eat,  a  baked  or  roasted  potato,  with 
a  little  salt  and  butter,  is  a  good  substitute  for  an  egg  or 
piece  of  ham.  Substitutes  for  these,  again,  are  found  in  a 
roasted  apple,  or  in  stewed  fruit  or  cranberry  sauce.  Dinner, 
cold  bread  and  butter,  and  a  piece  of  lean  meat  of  any  sort, 
with  baked  or  roasted  potatoes,  or  some  other  vegetable  ;  as 
dessert,  stewed  fruits  or  berries  of  any  sort,  and  nothing  else. 


506  CBOUPY  SEASON. 

Supper,  a  single  cup  of  weak  tea,  some  cold  stale  bread  and 
butter,  and  nothing  else  whatever;  any  "relish,"  as  it  is 
called,  whether  in  the  shape  of  a  bit  of  dried  beef,  or  cold 
ham,  or  sauce,  or  preserves,  or  cake,  is  nothing  less  than  an 
absolute  curse.  This  is  strong  language  ;  but  such  things  do 
give  millions  of  persons  restless  nights,  uncomfortable  awak- 
enings, and  succeeding  days  of  unwellness  in  every  degree, 
from  simple  fidgets  to  ennui,  ill-nature,  fretfulness,  and  the 
whole  catalogue  of  little,  mean,  low  traits  of  character,  such 
as  snappishness,  fault-finding,  querulousness,  glooms,  and  the 
like ;  this  is  because  nature  does  not  need  food  for  supper, 
does  not  call  for  it ;  and  a  plain  tea-table,  with  nothing  but 
bread  and  butter  on  it,  repels  us  the  moment  we  enter  the 
room.  The  next  thing  is  to  have  something  which  has  more 
taste  in  it,  which  *  relishes  ; "  in  other  words,  which  tempts 
nature  to  take  what  she  would  not  otherwise  have  done  ;  and 
when  once  inveigled  into  the  stomach,  it  must  be  got  rid  of; 
but  no  preparation  has  been  made  for  it ;  it  is  as  unwelcome 
as  the  appearance  of  a  friend  at  dinner  on  a  washing  day. 
The  result  is,  that  what  has  been  eaten  is  imperfectly  digest- 
ed, a  bad  blood  is  made  of  it,  and  this,  being  mixed  with  the 
good  blood  of  the  system,  renders  the  whole  mass  of  blood  in 
the  body  imperfect  and  impure  ;  and  as  the  blood  goes  to 
every  part  of  the  system,  there  is  not  a  square  inch  of  it  that 
is  not  ready  for  disease  of  some  sort,  those  parts  being  most 
liable  to  attack  which  had  suffered  previous  injury  of  any 
kind ;  those  who  have  weak  brains,  for  example,  become 
"  softer  "  still,  under  the  charitable  name  of  "  nervousness." 


CROUPY  SEASON. 

IN  the  early  part  of  spring  many  children  die  of  croup,  which 
is  simply  a  common  cold  settling  itself  in  the  windpipe,  and 
spending  all  its  force  there.  Why  it  should  tend  to  the  throat 
in  them,  rather  than  to  the  lungs,  as  in  some  grown  persons, 
and  to  the  head  in  others,  giving  one  man  influenza,  another 
pleurisy,  a  third  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  and  a  fourth 
some  low  form  of  fever,  is  not  so  important  as  to  know  the 


CBOUPT  SEASON.  507 

causes  of  croup  and  the  means  of  avoiding  it.  The  very 
sound  of  a  croupy  cough  is  perfectly  terrible  to  any  mother 
who  has  ever  heard  it  once.  In  any  forty-eight  hours,  it  may 
carry  a  child  from  perfect  health  to  the  grave.  Croup  always 
originates  in  a  cold,  and  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  this  cold  is 
the  result  of  exposure  to  dampness,  either  of  the  clothing  or 
of  the  atmosphere  ;  most  generally  the  latter,  and  particularly 
that  form  of  it  which  prevails  in  thawy  weather,  when  snow 
is  on  the  ground,  or  about  sundown  in  the  early  spring 
season.  At  midday  the  bright  sun  lures  the  children  out  of 
doors,  and  having  been  pent  up  all  winter,  a  hilarity  and  a 
vigor  of  exercise  are  induced,  much  beyond  what  they  have 
been  accustomed  to  recently.  They  do  not  feel  either  tired 
or  cold  ;  but  evening  approaches,  the  cool  of  which  condenses 
the  moisture  contained  in  the  air ;  this  rapidly  abstracts  the 
heat  from  the  body  of  the  child,  and  with  a  doubly  deleteri- 
ous impression  ;  for  not  only  is  the  body  cooled  too  quickly, 
but,  by  reason  of  the  previous  exercise,  it  has  been  wearied 
and  has  lost  a  great  deal  of  its  power  to  resist  cold,  hence  the 
child  is  chilled.  Exercise  has  given  it  an  unusual  appetite,  a 
hearty  supper  is  taken,  and  in  the  course  of  the  night  the  re- 
action of  the  chill  of  the  evening  before  sets  in,  and  gives 
fever;  the  general  system  is  oppressed,  not  only  by  the 
hearty  meal,  but  by  the  inability  of  the  stomach  to  digest  it, 
and  fever,  oppression,  and  exhaustion,  all  combined,  very 
easily  sap  away  the  life  of  the  child.  In  fact,  it  may  yet  be 
found,  when  the  nature  of  diphtheria  is  better  known,  that  it 
is  a  typhoid  croup  —  malignant  croup. 

Children  should  be  kept  as  warmly  clad,  at  least  until 
May,  as  in  the  depth  of  winter;  they  should  not  be  allowed 
to  remain  out  of  doors  later  than  sundown,  when  they  should 
be  brought  into  a  warm  room,  their  feet  examined  and  made 
dry  and  warm,  their  suppers  taken,  and  then  sent  to  bed,  not 
to  go  outside  the  doors  until  next  morning  after  breakfast. 
All  through  February,  March,  and  until  the  middle  of  April, 
especially  when  snow  is  on  the  ground,  children  under  eight 
years  of  age  should  not  be  allowed  to  be  out  of  doors  at  all 
later  than  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  unless  the  sun  is 
shining,  or  unless  they  are  kept  in  bodily  motion,  so  as  to 
keep  off  a  feeling  of  chilliness.  We  have  never  lost  a  child, 


508  CROUPT  SEASON. 

but  feel  that  it  must  be  a  terrible  calamity.  Young  mothers 
seldom  get  over  the  loss  of  a  first-born.  Suroly,  then,  it  is 
worth  all  the  care  suggested  in  this  article,  to  avert  a  calamity 
which  is  to  be  felt  until  we  die.  The  commonest  sense  dic- 
tates the  instant  sending  for  a  physician  in  case  of  an  attack 
of  croup,  but  the  moment  a  messenger  is  despatched,  have 
three  or  four  flannels,  dip  them  in  water  as  hot  as  your  hand 
can  bear,  and  apply  them  successively  to  the  throat  of  the 
child,  so  as  to  keep  the  throat  hot  all  the  time,  so  as  to  evap- 
orate the  matters,  which,  if  retained,  cause  the  clogging  up 
inside  which  soon  stops  the  breath.  Hot  water  should  be 
constantly  added  to  that  in  which  the  flannels  are  thrown,  so 
as  to  keep  it  all  the  time  hot.  Keep  the  water  from  dribbling 
on  the  clothing  of  the  child,  and  see  to  it  that  the  feet  are  dry 
and  warm.  Most  likely  the  child  will  be  out  of  danger  before 
the  physician  arrives,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  turn 
over  the  responsibility  on  him.  Loose  cough,  freer  breath- 
ing, and  a  copious  discharge  of  phlegm,  indicate  relief  and 
safety. 

Croup  seldom  comes,  on  suddenly.  Generally  it  has  at 
first  no  other  symptoms  than  those  of  a  common  cold  ;  but  the 
very  moment  the  child  is  seen  to  carry  his  hand  towards  the 
throat,  indicating  discomfort  there,  it  should  be  considered  an 
attack  of  croup,  and  should  be  treated  accordingly.  When  a 
child  is  sick  of  anything,  no  physician  can  tell  where  that 
sickness  will  end.  So  it  is  with  a  cold  ;  it  may  appear  to  be 
a  very  slight  one  indeed,  still  it  may  end  fatally  in  croup, 
putrid  sore  throat,  or  diphtheria.  The  moment  a  mother 
observes  croupy  symptoms  in  a  child  from  two  to  eight  years, 
—  the  specially  croupy  age,  —  arrange  to  keep  it  in  her  own 
room,  by  her  own  side,  day  and  night,  not  allowing  it  for  a 
moment  to  go  outside  the  door,  keeping  the  child  comforta- 
bly warm,  so  that  no  chilliness  nor  draught  of  air  shall  come 
over  it.  Light  food  should  be  eaten,  no  meats  or  hot  bread, 
or  pastries.  The  whole  body,  the  feet  especially,  should  be 
kept  warm  all  the  time.  Rubbing  twenty  drops  of  sweet  oil 
into  the  skin  over  the  breast,  patiently,  with  the  hand,  two  or 
three  or  more  times  a  day,  often  gives  the  most  marked  relief 
in  a  cold,  thus  preventing  croup  from  supervening  on  an 
attack  of  common  cold.  Such  a  course,  promptly  pursued, 


TEE  BEST  INHERITANCE.  509 

will  promptly  cure  almost  any  cold  a  child  will  take,  and  will 
seldom  tail  to  ward  off  effectually,  in  a  day  or  two,  what 
would  otherwise  have  been  a  fatal  attack  of  croup,  with  its 
ringing,  hissing,  barking  sound,  and  its  uneasy,  oppressive, 
and  labored  breathing,  none  of  which  can  ever  be  mistaken 
when  once  heard.  Many  a  sweet  child  is  lost  thus  :  the 
parents  are  aroused  at  dead  of  night  with  a  cough  that  sug- 
gests croup  ;  but  it  seems  to  pass  off,  and  in  the  morning  they 
wake  up  with  a  feeling  of  thankful  deliverance  from  a  boding 
ill.  The  child  runs  about  all  day  as  if  perfectly  well ;  but 
the  next  night  the  symptoms  are  more  decided,  and  on  the 
third  night  the  child  dies ;  but  this  would  have  been  averted 
with  great  certainty,  if,  from  the  first  night,  the  child  had 
been  kept  in  a  warm  room,  warmly  clad,  the  bowels  had 
been  kept  free,  and  nothing  had  been  eaten  but  toast  with 
tea,  or  gruel,  or  stewed  fruits. 


THE  BEST  INHERITANCE. 

ABILITY  to  help  one's  self,  manly  principles,  and  a  good 
constitution,  are  the  best  inheritance.  Infinitely  more  valua- 
ble are  these  than  beauty,  birth,  or  blood.  Beside  them 
wealth,  and  fame,  and  position  pale  away  in  darkness,  when 
they  have  come  down  from  father  to  sou ;  because  then  they 
may  be  lost,  and  are  ignobly  lost  in  countless  instances.  But 
with  these,  — health,  manliness,  and  self-sustaining  power,  — 
wealth  is  created,  a  name  may  be  founded  as  lasting  as  that 
of  the  Caesars,  and  a  standing  among  men  secured  of  more 
honorable  mention  than  the  coffers  of  all  kings  could  pur- 
chase. 

These  things  being  true,  the  wiser  policy  of  parents  is,  not 
to  work  themselves  to  death,  in  order  to  leave  their  children 
perishable  thousands ;  but,  by  judicious  teachings  from  in- 
fancy, show  those  children  how  to  take  care  of  their  health, 
and  how  to  make  a  living  for  themselves. 


510  BHEUMATISM. 


RHEUMATISM. 

COMMON  rheumatism  is  a  disease  which  affects  the  joints, 
the  hinges  of  the  body,  in  such  a  wa}r,  that  the  slightest  mo- 
tion of  the  ailing  part  gives  pain.  A  creaking  hinge  is  dry, 
and  turns  hard.  A  single  drop  of  oil  to  moisten  it  makes  a 
wonderful  change,  and  it  instantly  moves  on  itself  with  the 
utmost  facility.  All  kinds  of  rheumatism  are  an  inflammation 
of  the  surface  of  the  joints.  Inflammation  is  heat ;  this  heat 
dries  their  surfaces  ;  hence,  the  very  slightest  effort  at  motion 
gives  piercing  pain.  In  a  healthy  condition  of  the  parts, 
nature  is  constantly  throwing  out  a  lubricating  oil,  which 
keeps  the  joints  in  a  perfectly  smooth  and  easy- working  condi- 
tion. Rheumatism  is  almost  always  caused  —  indeed,  it  may 
be  nearer  the  truth  to  say,  that  it  is  always  the  result  of  a  cold 
dampness.  A  dry  cold,  or  a  warm  dampness,  does  not  induce 
rheumatism.  A  garment,  wetted  by  perspiration,  or  rain,  or 
water  in  any  other  form,  about  a  joint,  and  allowed  to  dry 
while  the  person  is  in  a  state  of  rest,  is  the  most  common  way 
of  causing  rheumatism.  A  partial  wetting  of  a  garment  is 
more  apt  to  induce  an  attack  than  if  the  entire  clothing  were 
wetted ;  because,  in  the  latter  case,  it  would  be  certainly  and 
speedily  exchanged  for  dry  garments.  There  are  two  very 
certain  methods  of  preventing  rheumatism.  The  very  moment 
a  garment  is  wetted  in  whole  or  in  part,  change  it,  or  keep  in 
motion  sufficient  to  maintain  a  very  slight  perspiration,  until 
the  clothing  is  perfectly  dried. 

The  failure  to  wear  woollen  flannel  next  the  skin,  is  the 
most  frequent  cause  of  rheumatism ;  for  a  common  muslin,  or 
linen,  or  silk  shirt  of  a  person  in  a  perspiration,  becomes 
damp  and  cold  the  instant  a  puff  of  air  strikes  it,  even  in 
midsummer.  This  is  not  the  case  when  woollen  flannel  is 
worn  next  the  skin. 

The  easiest,  most  certain,  and  least  hurtful  way  of  curing 
this  troublesome  affection  is,  first,  to  keep  the  joint  affected 
wound  around  with  several  folds  of  woollen  flannel ;  second, 
live  entirely  on  the  lightest  kind  of  food,  such  as  coarse 
breads,  ripe  fruits,  berries,  boiled  turnips,  stewed  apples,  and 


PRIVATE   THINGS.  511 

the  like.  If  such  things  were  eaten  to  the  extent  of  keeping 
the  system  freely  open,  and  exercise  were  taken,  so  that  a 
slight  moisture  should  be  on  the  surface  of  the  skin  all  the 
time ;  or  if,  in  bed,  the  same  thing  were  accomplished  by  hot 
teas  and  plentiful  bed-clothing,  a  grateful  relief  and  an  ultimate 
cure  will  very  certainly  result  in  a  reasonably  short  time. 
Without  this  soft,  and  moist,  and  warm  condition  of  the  skin, 
and  an  open  state  of  the  system,  the  disease  will  continue  to 
torture  for  weeks,  and  months,  and  years. 

Inflammatory  rheumatism  may,  for  all  practical  purposes,  be 
regarded  as  an  aggravated  form  of  the  common  kind,  extended 
to  all  the  joints  of  the  body,  instead  of  implicating  only  one  or 
two.  For  all  kinds,  time,  flannel,  warmth,  with  a  light  and 
cooling  diet,  are  the  great  remedies. 


PRIVATE  THINGS. 

A  PERSON  called  some  time  ago,  who,  in  addition  to  a  throat 
difficulty,  complained  that  the  urine  had  been  coming  away  in 
a  dribble  for  years,  drop  by  drop,  day  and  night.  There  was 
no  remedy.  No  one  can  think  of  being  in  such  a  condition  for 
a  week  without  the  most  decided  aversion  ;  but  to  remain  so, 
hopelessly,  for  all  the  long  years  of  life  yet  to  come  and  go  in 
their  weariness,  is  horrible  to  think  of!  The  immediate  cause 
of  this  distressing  malady  was  a  paralysis  of  the  bladder, 
brought  on  by  resisting  the  calls  of  nature  to  urination  from 
early  morning  until  business  hours  were  over,  and  making  it  a 
habit  day  after  day,  on  the  ground  that  it  interfered  with 
business  to  give  the  requisite  attention,  and  not  knowing  that 
any  harm  could  come  from  it. 

By  retaining  the  urine  too  long,  the  bladder  sometimes  be- 
comes so  distended  as  to  burst,  and  death  is  inevitable.  When 
the  membrane  is  not  ruptured,  it  is,  in  a  sense,  like  a  bo\v 
bent  to  breaking,  and  loses  all  power  of  action ;  the  urine 
cannot  be  discharged ;  terrible  pains  ensue,  and  death  is  a 
speedy  result.  At  other  times  persons  get  into  the  habit  of 
resisting  urination ;  this  induces  inflammation,  reabsorption 
into  the  circulation,  and  is  a  frequent  cause  of  stone  in  the 


512  PRIVATE  THINGS. 

bladder,  one  of  the  most  fearfully  painful  of  human  maladies, 
and  when  not  fatal,  requiring  a  dangerous  operation,  at  a  cost 
of  several  hundred  or  a  thousand  dollars.  This  inability  to 
urinate,  brought  on  by  deferring  the  calls,  is,  under  all  cir- 
cumstances, a  most  distressing,  dangerous,  and  alarming 
malady,  and  demands  the  most  prompt  and  energetic  treat* 
ment.  The  object  of  this  article  is  not  to  propose  a  remedy, 
for  too  often  it  proves  fatal  in  two  or  three  days ;  it  is  rather 
intended  as  a  warning  to  all  to  avoid  the  cause,  by  the  easy 
means  of  yielding  to  nature's  calls  habitually,  and  on  the 
instant,  however  frequent.  Medical  books  give  a  variety  of 
fatal  cases,  where  the  patient  was  riding  in  a  stage-coach, 
particularly  in  cold  weather,  and  resisted  nature  for  a  whole 
day.  Parents  should  teach  their  children  that  it  is  a  false 
modesty  and  a  false  politeness  to  put  off  these  calls  under  any 
circumstances  whatever.  It  is  a  thing  which  should  invari- 
ably be  attended  to  the  last  thing  at  night,  and  the  last  thing 
previous  to  going  to  any  public  assembly,  and  as  nothing  can 
excuse  an  unnecessary  risk  .of  life,  so  nothing  can  excuse 
resistance  to  a  call  for  urination. 

While  on  the  subject,  it  is  well  to  state  that  the  more  a  per- 
son exercises,  the  less  will  be  the  amount  urinated,  because 
the  water  of  the  system  then  passes  through  the  pores  of  the 
skin.  But  when  the  weather  is  cold,  these  pores  are  to  a 
certain  extent  closed ;  the  water  is  then  driven  to  the  interior, 
and  has  to  be  passed  off  through  the  kidneys. 

Ordinarily,  the  urine  is  high-colored  and  scant  in  warm 
weather,  or  when  from  exercise  or  other  cause  there  is  free 
perspiration ;  in  cold  weather  it  is  abundant  and  clear.  It  is 
a  practice  hurtful  and  unwise  to  inspect  the  urine  ;  its  color, 
consistence,  and  quantity  are  modified  by  such  a  variety  of 
circumstances  of  heat  and  cold,  chill  and  fever,  food  and  drink, 
and  even  by  the  emotions  of  the  mind,  and  only  a  thoughtful 
physician  can  put  a  proper  estimate  on  appearances,  and  even 
then,  it  must  be  in  connection  with  all  the  facts  of  the  case, 
bodily,  mental,  and  moral. 

Persons  suffer  a  great  deal  in  large  cities  from  the  want  of 
public  urinals.  Scarcely  a  reader  but  may  remember  the  time 
when  he  would  have  freely  given  a  dollar  for  the  use  of  such 
an  institution.  These  establishments  were  formerly  in  Paris, 


PRIVATE  THINGS.  513 

but  it  was  found  impossible  to  keep  them  clean,  and  they  were 
declared  a  nuisance.  Hotels  are  scattered  all  through  our 
cities,  and  while  no  proprietor  of  respectability  would  refuse 
an  accommodation,  yet  if  it  could  be  brought  about,  that  a 
tax  of  half  a  dime  or  a  penny  would  secure  it  as  a  matter  of 
bargain  and  sale,  leaving  both  parties  independent  and  free 
from  obligation,  much  relief  would  be  afforded  and  a  great  deal 
of  suffering  prevented.  The  whole  subject  merits  the  mature 
attention  of  every  reader. 

A  very  hasty  and  forcible  attempt  to  urinate,  especially 
when  the  parts  are  turgid,  has  resulted  in  a  rupture  of  the 
membrane  and  subsequent  stricture,  and  strictures  tend  to  be- 
come more  and  more  aggravated,  until  urination  can  only  be 
performed  by  introducing  a  tube  into  the  bladder,  the  very 
thought  of  which,  both  as  to  the  trouble  and  danger  of  it,  well 
inspires  dread.  A  patient  once  had  practised  this  for  sixteen 
years,  but  on  one  occasion  introducing  the  instrument  careless- 
ly, an  artery  was  ruptured,  causing  death  in  a  few  hours. 
And  }ret  not  one  reader  in  a  hundred  but  thinks  it  a  small 
<natter,  and  without  possible  harm,  to  resist  the  desire  to 
urinate,  for  hours  together. 

STOOLING.  —  By  remaining  too  long  at  stool-  habitually,  or 
by  a  sudden  straining  effort,  with  a  view  to  expedition,  the 
bowels  have  sometimes  fallen  down ;  at  others,  piles  are 
engendered,  as  well  by  the  neglect  to  have  one  action  of  the 
bowels  every  twenty-four  hours.  Ailments  of  this  sort  ag- 
gravate themselves  until  it  comes  about,  whenever  the  bowels 
act,  their  inner  coating  protrudes,  and  the  patient  has  to  go  to 
bed  and  remain  there  in  literal  agonies  —  "  worse  than  death  " 
is  a  common  expression ;  sometimes  these  tortures  last  for 
two  or  three  hours,  to  be  repeated  every  day  of  the  world,  and 
yet  between  these  sufferings  the  patient  often  appears  in  the 
enjoyment  of  perfect  health.  And  how  is  such  a  terrible 
calamity  induced  ?  In  one  of  three  ways  :  remaining  at  stool 
over  eight  or  ten  minutes;  straining  rapidly;  or  third,  by 
deferring  the  calls  of  nature  until  the  body  gets  into  the  habit 
of  calling  every  two  or  three  days,  instead  of  regularly  every 
twenty-four  hours,  and  that  soon  after  breakfast.  The  lesson 
of  the  article  is,  a  call  of  nature  as  to  urination,  or  stooling, 
33 


514  MARVELS   OF  MAN. 

or  the  "  delays  "  in  the  other  regard,  can  never  be  resisted 
with  impunity  in  any  one  single  instance,  and  many  a  life 
has  been  embittered  in  consequence  of  ignorance  of  these 
things ;  a  life  which  otherwise  would  have  been  one  of  sun- 
shine and  usefulness. 


MARVELS  OF  MAN. 

WHILE  the  gastric  juice  has  a  mild,  bland,  sweetish  taste,  it 
possesses  the  power  of  dissolving  the  hardest  food  that  can  be 
swallowed  ;  it  has  no  influence  whatever  on  the  soft  and  deli- 
cate fibres  of  the  living  stomach,  nor  upon  the  living  hand ; 
but,  at  the  moment  of  death,  it  begins  to  eat  them  away  with 
the  power  of  the  strongest  acids. 

There  is  dust  on  sea,  on  land ;  in  the  valley,  and  on  the 
mountain-top ;  there  is  dust  always  and  everywhere ;  the 
atmosphere  is  full  of  it ;  it  penetrates  the  noisome  dungeon, 
and  visits  the  deepest,  darkest  caves  of  the  earth ;  no  palace 
door  can  shut  it  out,  no  drawer  so  "  secret "  as  to  escape  its 
presence ;  every  breath  of  wind  dashes  it  upon  the  open  eye, 
and  yet  that  eye  is  not  blinded,  because  there  is  a  fountain  of 
the  blandest  fluid  in  nature  incessantly  emptying  itself  under 
the  eyelid,  which  spreads  it  over  the  surface  of  the  ball  at 
every  winking,  and  washes  every  atom  of  dust  away.  But 
this  liquid,  so  mild,  and  so  well  adapted  to  the  eye  itself,  has 
some  acridity,  which,  under  certain  circumstances,  becomes 
so  decided  as  to  be  scalding  to  the  skin,  and  would  rot  away 
the  eyelids,  were  it  not  that  along  the  edges  of  them  there  are 
little  oil  manufactories,  which  spread  over  their  surface  a  coat- 
ing as  impervious  to  the  liquids  necessary  for  keeping  the 
eye-ball  washed  clean,  as  the  best  varnish  is  impervious  to 
water. 

The  breath  which  leaves  the  lungs  has  been  so  perfectly 
divested  of  its  life-giving  properties,  that  to  rebreathe  it,  un- 
mixed with  other  air,  the  moment  it  escapes  from  the  mouth, 
would  cause  immediate  death  by  suffocation ;  while  if  it 
hovered  about  us,  a  more  or  less  destructive  influence  over 


MARVELS   OF  MAN.  515 

health  and  life  would  be  occasioned ;  but  it  is  made  of  a 
nature  so  much  lighter  than  the  common  air,  that  the  instant  it 
escapes  the  lips  and  nostrils,  it  ascends  to  the  higher  regions, 
above  the  breathing  point,  there  to  be  rectified,  renovated,  and 
sent  back  again,  replete  with  purity  and  life.  How  rapidly  it 
ascends,  is  beautifully  exhibited  any  frosty  morning. 

But  foul  and  deadly  as  the  expired  air  is,  Nature,  wisely 
economical  in  all  her  works  and  ways,  turns  it  to  good  ac- 
count in  its  outward  passage  through  the  organs  of  voice,  and 
makes  of  it  the  whisper  of  love,  the  soft  words  of  affection,  the 
tender  tones  of  human  sympathy,  the  sweetest  strains  of 
ravishing  music,  the  persuasive  eloquence  of  the  finished 
orator. 

If  a  well-made  man  be  extended  on  the  ground,  his  arms 
at  right  angles  with  the  body,  a  circle,  making  the  navel  its 
centre,  will  just  take  in  the  head,  the  finger-ends,  and  feet. 

The  distance  from  "  top  to  toe  "  is  precisely  the  same  as  that 
between  the  tips  of  the  fingers  when  the  arms  are  extended. 

The  length  of  the  body  is  just  six  times  that  of  the  foot ; 
while  the  distance  from  the  edge  of  the  hair  on  the  forehead, 
to  the  end  of  the  chin,  is  one  tenth  the  length  of  the  whole 
stature. 

Of  the  sixty-two  primary  elements  known  in  nature,  only 
eighteen  are  found  in  the  human  body,  and  of  these,  seven  are 
metallic.  Iron  is  found  in  the  blood  ;  phosphorus  in  the  brain  ; 
limestone  in  the  bile  ;  lime  in  the  bones  ;  dust  and  ashes  in  all ! 
Not  only  these  eighteen  human  elements,  but  the  whole  sixty- 
two,  of  which  the  universe  is  made,  have  their  essential  basis 
in  the  four  substances  —  oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  and 
carbon,  representing  the  more  familiar  names  of  fire,  water, 
saltpetre,  and  charcoal.  And  such  is  man,  the  lord  of  earth  !  a 
spark  of  fire,  a  drop  of  water,  a  grain  of  gunpowder,  an  atom 
of  charcoal !  But  looking  at  him  in  another  direction,  these 
elements  shadow  forth  the  higher  qualities  of  a  diviner  nature, 
of  an  immortal  existence.  In  that  spark  is  the  caloric  which 
speaks  of  irrepressible  activity ;  in  that  drop  is  the  water 
which  speaks  of  purity ;  in  that  grain  is  the  force  by  which  he 
subdues  all  things  to  himself,  makes  the  wide  creation  the 
supplier  of  his  wants,  and  the  servitor  of  his  pleasure  ;  while 
in  that  atom  of  charcoal,  there  is  the  diamond,  which  speaks 


516  AVENUES  OF  DEATH. 

at  once  of  light  and  purity,  of  indestructibility,  and  of  resist- 
less progress,  for  there  is  nothing  which  outshines  it ;  it  is 
purer  than  the  dew-drop ;  "  moth  and  rust  corrupt  "  it  not,  nor 
can  ordinary  fires  destroy  ;  while  it  cuts  its  way  alike  through 
brass,  and  adamant,  and  hardest  steel.  In  that  light  we  see 
an  eternal  progression  towards  omniscience ;  in  that  purity, 
the  goodness  of  a  divine  nature ;  in  that  indestructibility,  an 
immortal  existence ;  in  that  progress,  a  steady  ascension  to- 
wards the  home  and  bosom  of  God. 


AVENUES  OF  DEATH. 

ISAAC  WATTS,  with  mournful  and  suggestive  truthfulness, 
sang,  — 

"  Dangers  stand  thick  through  all  the  ground, 

To  push  us  to  the  tomb, 
And  fierce  diseases  wait  around, 

To  hurry  mortals  home. 
Our  life  contains  a  thousand  strings, 

And  dies  if  one  be  gone  : 
Strange  that  a  harp  of  thousand  strings 

Should  keep  in  tune  so  long !  " 

All  who  died  in  England  during  1868,  were  the  victims  of 
one  hundred  and  twelve  groups  of  disease.  A  hundred  and 
twelve  fatal  shafts  are  sped  about  and  around  us,  a  hundred 
and  twelve  diseases  are  always  in  existence  —  are  floating  on 
the  wings  of  the  viewless  winds  ;  our  neighbors,  one  by  one, 
fall  at  our  side ;  and  at  the  age  of  forty,  sixty,  eighty  years, 
we  "  still  live,"  to  magnify  the  kindness  of  that  Eye  which 
never  slumbers  or  sleeps.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  that  care, 
multitudes  dail}'  rush  into  the  arms  of  death  by  inadvertence, 
by  thoughtlessness,  by  inconsiderations,  and  by  the  most  un- 
warrantable, the  most  reckless  exposures.  The  same  care  that 
is  expended  in  saving  a  dollar,  would  many  a  time  save  a  holy, 
human  life.  Abraham,  Leviticus,  Deuteronomy,  or  some 
other  of  the  ancient  notabilities,  sold  his  title,  his  honor,  for  a 
bowl  of  soup  ;  but  he  was  so  hungry  he  couldn't  help  it.  That 
a  woman  before  now  has  walked  herself  into  a  "  spell  "  of  sick- 
ness, if  not  to  death,  in  searching  for  a  ribbon,  or  dress- 


AVENUES   OF  DEATH.  517 

pattern  of  a  particular  shade  of  color,  and  gave  as  a  reason, 
that  she  couldn't  help  it ;  that  multitudes  of  them  sit  up  sew- 
ing till  near  midnight,  ruin  their  eyes,  and  make  themselves 
w  cross  as  bears  "  for  a  whole  week  afterwards,  by  the  over- 
tax on  the  system,  and  give,  as  an  all-convincing  reason,  they 
couldn't  help  it ;  that  others  go  into  the  kitchen  to  make  pastry, 
cakes,  and  pies,  while  Bridget  stands  at  her  ease  and  looks 
complacently  on,  knowing  that  she  is  paid  at  the  rate  of  eight 
dollars  a  month  to  oversee  her  mistress  do  her.  own  work  ;  the 
said  mistress,  getting  overheated  and  exhausted,  goes  up- 
stairs, throws  herself  on  her  bed,  falls  asleep,  gets  chilled, 
and  wakes  up  to  be  an  invalid  for  a  week  or  two,  and  gives  as 
a  reason,  she  couldn't  help  it;  that  at  another  time  similar 
results  follow  from  her  showing  a  servant  how  to  sweep  a 
floor,  make  a  bed,  or  scrub  the  shelves  to  whiteness,  because 
she  couldn't  help  it;  that  doctors  live  on  the  Avenue,  and 
doctors'  families  sport  faultless  equipages,  with  liveried  ser- 
vants, and  fifteen  hundred  dollar  match-horses  in  consequence 
of  this  rather  strange  mode  of  reasoning  —  cannot  be  truth- 
fully denied,  so  determined  do  many  seem  to  brave  all  prov- 
idence, and  to  put  all  sense,  common  and  uncommon,  at 
defiance.  A  daughter  goes  to  a  ball  or  an  opera,  rejects  gum- 
shoes and  a  shawl  as  precautionary.  She  comes  home  in  the 
rain,  feet  wet,  body  chilled,  with  a  week's  illness,  and  reasons 
thus  :  "  I  couldn't  help  it.  I  was  there,  and  was  obliged  to 
come  home."  Ye  happy  husbands  !  how  many  times  have  you 
been  "shut  up"  by  this  adroit  mode  of  handling  an  argument 
on  the  part  of  your  divinities?  And  how  often  patience  has 
not  had  her  perfect  work  when  you  have  seen  the  utter  falsity 
of  the  argument,  but  yet  did  not  exactly  "see  your  wax- 
clear  ;  "  in  other  words,  hadn't  sense  enough  to  flash  out  the 
absurdity  in  a  single,  all-convincing  utterance?  How  often 
this  has  happened,  you  must  report  yourselves.  But  be  can- 
did. Are  you  not  too  mad  half  the  time  to  do  anything  but 
grit  the  teeth,  and  say  nothing?  But  these  things  are  so,  be- 
cause, —  because  we  have  —  hem  !  —  "  hearn  tell !  "  The  real 
meaning  of  the  expression,  "  I  couldn't  help  it,"  is,  I  didn't 
choose  to  help  it ;  in  other  words,  there  was  an  inability  to  act 
wisely,  or  an  ignorance  of  cause  and  effect,  which  are  equally 
criminal,  often  ending,  as  these  things  do,  in  tedious  invalid- 


518  FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

ism,  at  a  ruinous  expense  of  the  husband's  time  and  means,  or 
in  leaving  whole  families  of  motherless  children  to  grow  up 
uncared  for,  if  not  driven  from  their  homes,  by  some  design- 
ing or  heartless  successor ;  driven  into  stranger  families ; 
driven  into  ill-assorted  or  unwilling  marriages ;  driven  into 
neglect,  to  want,  to  temptation,  to  the  acceptance  of  wages 
for  accursed  deeds.  Health  is  a  duty,  its  loss  a  crime. 


FARMERS'  WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

THERE  is  scarcely  any  lot  in  life,  in  this  country,  which 
promises  so  much  quiet  enjoyment,  such  uniform  health,  and 
uninterrupted  prosperity,  as  that  of  a  gentleman  farmer's  wife  ; 
of  a  man  who  has  a  well-improved,  well-stocked  plantation,  all 
paid  for,  with  no  indebtedness,  and  a  sufficient  surplus  of  money 
always  at  command  to  meet  emergencies,  and  to  take  advan- 
tage of  those  circumstances  of  times,  and  seasons,  and  changing 
conditions  which  are  constantly  presenting  themselves.  Such 
a  woman  is  incomparably  more  certain  of  living  in  quiet  com- 
fort to  a  good  old  age  than  the  wife  of  a  merchant-prince,  or 
one  of  the  money-kings  of  Wall  Street ;  who,  although  they 
may  clear  thousands  in  a  day,  do,  nevertheless,  in  multitudes 
of  cases,  die  in  poverty,  leaving  their  wives  and  daughters  to 
the  sad  heritage  of  being  slighted  and  forgotten  by  those  who 
once  were  made  happy  by  their  smiles ;  and  to  pine  away  in 
tears  and  destitution.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  often  a  sad  lot, 
indeed,  to  be  the  wife  of  a  fanner  who  begins  married  life  by 
renting  a  piece  of  land,  or  buying  a  "place  "  on  credit,  with 
the  moth  of  "  interest"  feeding  on  the  sweat  of  his  face  every 
moment  of  his  existence. 

The  affectionate  and  steady  interest,  the  laudable  pride,  and 
the  self-denying  devotion  which  wives  have  for  the  comfort, 
prosperity,  and  respectability  of  their  husbands  and  children, 
is  a  proverb  and  a  wonder  in  all  civilized  lands.  There  is  an 
abnegation  of  self  in  this  direction,  as  constant  as  the  flow  of 
time ;  so  loving,  so  uncomplaining,  so  heroic,  that  if  angels 
make  note  of  mortal  things,  they  may  well  look  down  in 
smiling  admiration.  But  it  is  a  melancholy  and  undeniable 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  519 

fact,  that  in  millions  of  cases,  that  which  challenges  angelic 
admiration  fails  to  be  recognized  or  appreciated  by  the  very 
uieii  who  are  the  incessant  objects  of  these  high,  heroic  virtues. 
In  plain  language,  in  the  civilization  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  a  farmer's  wife,  as  a  too  general  rule,  is  a 
slave  and  a  drudge  ;  not  of  necessity,  by  design,  but  for  want 
of  that  consideration,  the  very  absence  of  which,  in  reference 
to  the  wife  of  a  man's  youth,  is  a  crime.  It  is,  perhaps,  safe 
to  say,  that  on  three  farms  out  of  four,  the  wife  works  harder, 
endures  more,  than  any  other  on  the  place ;  more  than  the 
husband,  more  than  the  "farm-hand,"  more  than  the  "hired 
help "  of  the  kitchen.  Many  a  farmer  speaks  to  his  wife, 
habitually,  in  terms  so  imperious,  so  impatient,  so  petulant, 
that,  if  repeated  to  the  scullion  of  the  kitchen,  would  be  met 
with  an  indignant  and  speedy  departure,  or  if  to  the  man- 
help,  would  be  answered  with  a  stroke  from  the  shoulder, 
which  would  send  the  churl  reeling  a  rod  away ! 

In  another  way  a  farmer  inadvertently  increases  the  hard- 
ships of  his  wife ;  that  is,  by  speaking  to  her  or  treating  her 
disrespectfully  in  the  presence  of  the  servants  or  children.  The 
man  is  naturally  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  household,  and  if  he 
fails  to  show  to  his  wife,  on  all  occasions,  that  tenderness,  af- 
fection, and  respect  which  are  her  just  due,  it  is  instantly  noted 
on  the  part  of  menials,  and  children,  too,  and  they  very  easily 
glide  into  the  same  vice,  and  interpret  it  as  an  encouragement 
to  slight  her  authority,  to  undervalue  her  judgment,  and  to 
lower  that  high  standard  of  respect  which  of  right  belongs  to 
her.  And  as  the  wife  has  the  servants  and  children  always 
about  her,  and  is  under  the  necessity  of  giving  hourly  instruc- 
tions, the  want  of  fidelity  and  promptness  to  these  is  sufficient 
to  derange  the  whole  household,  and  utterly  thwart -that 
regularity  and  system,  without  which  there  is  no  domestic- 
enjoyment,  and  but  little  thrift  on  the  farm. 

The  indisputable  truth  is,  that  there  is  no  other  item  of 
superior,  or  perhaps  equal  importance,  in  the  happy  and  prof- 
itable management  of  any  farm,  great  or  small,  than  that 
every  person  on  it  should  be  made  to  understand,  that  defer- 
ence, and  respect,  and  prompt  and  faithful  obedience  should 
be  paid,  under  all  circumstances,  to  the  wife,  the  mother,  and 
the  mistress ;  the  larger  the  farm,  the  greater  interests  there 


520  FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

are  at  stake.  If  poor,  then  the  less  ability  is  there  to  run  the 
risk  or  losses  which  are  certain  to  occur  in  the  failure  of  prop- 
er obedience.  An  illustration  :  a  tardy  meal  infallibly  ruffles 
the  temper  of  the  workmen,  and  too  often  of  the  husband  ;  yet 
all  the  wife's  orders  were  given  in  time ;  but  the  boy  has 
lugged  in  bringing  wood ;  or  the  cook  failed  to  put  her  loaf  to 
bake  in  season,  because  they  did  not  fear  the  mistress,  and  the 
master  was  known  not  to  be  very  particular  to  enforce  his 
wife's  authority.  If  by  these  causes  a  dinner  is  thrown  back 
half  an  hour,  it  means,  on  a  good-sized  farm,  a  loss  of  time 
equivalent  to  the  work  of  one  hand  a  whole  day ;  it  means 
the  very  considerable  difference  between  working  pleasant- 
ly and  grumblingly  the  remainder  of  the  day ;  it  means  in 
harvest-time,  in  showery  weather,  the  loss  of  loads  of  hay  or 
grain. 

Time,  and  money,  and  health,  and  even  life  itself,  are  not 
unfrequeutly  lost  by  a  want  of  promptitude  on  the  part  of  the 
farmer  in  making  repairs  about  the  house,  in  procuring  needed 
things  in  time,  and  failing  to  have  those  little  conveniences 
which,  although  their  cost  is  even  contemptible,  are,  in  a 
measure,  practically  invaluable.  I  was  in  a  farmer's  house  one 
night ;  the  wife  and  two  daughters  were  plying  their  needles 
industriously  by  the  light  of  a  candle,  the  wick  of  which  was 
frequently  clipped  off  by  a  pair  of  scissors.  I  asked  the  hus- 
band why  he  did  not  buy  a  candle-snuffer.  "  O,  the  scissors 
are  good  enough."  And  yet  he  owned  six  hundred  acres  of 
tine  grazing  lands,  and  every  inch  paid  for.  I  once  called  on 
an  old  friend,  a  man  of  education,  and  of  a  family  loved  and 
honored  all  over  his  native  State.  The  buildings  were  of 
brick,  in  the  centre  of  an  inherited  farm  of  several  hundred 
acres.  The  house  was  supplied  with  the  purest,  coldest,  and 
best  water,  from  a  well  in  the  yard  ;  the  facilities  for  obtaining 
which  were  a  rope,  one  end  of  which  was  tied  to  a  post,  the 
other  to  an  old  tin  pan,  literally.  The  discomfort  and  un- 
necessary labor  involved  in  these  two  cases,  may  be  estimated 
by  the  reader  at  his  leisure. 

I  know  it  to  be  the  case,  and  have  seen  it  on  many  Western 
farms,  when  firewood  was  wanted,  a  tree  was  cut  down  and 
hauled  bodily  to  the  door  of  the  kitchen  ;  and  when  it  was  all 
gone,  another  was  drawn  up  to  supply  its  place ;  giving  the 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  521 

cook  and  the  wife,  green  wood  with  which  to  kindle  and  keep 
up  their  fires. 

There  are  thousands  of  farms  in  this  country,  where  the 
spring  which  supplies  all  the  water  for  drink  and  cooking,  is 
from  a  quarter  to  more  than  half  a  mile  distant  from  the  house, 
and  a  "  pailful "  is  brought  at  a  time,  involving  five  or  ten 
miles'  walking  in  a  day,  for  months  and  years  together ;  when 
a  man  in  half  a  day  could  make  a  slide,  and  with  a  fifty-cent 
barrel  could  in  half  an  hour  deliver,  at  the  door,  enough  to  last 
the  whole  day.  How  many  weeks  of  painful  and  expensive 
sickness  ;  how  many  lives  have  been  lost,  of  wives,  and  daugh- 
ters, and  cooks,  by  being  caught  in  a  shower  between  the 
house  and  the  spring,  while  in  a  state  of  perspiration  or 
weakness,  from  working  over  the  fire,  cannot  be  known  ;  but 
that  they  may  be  numbered  by  thousands,  will  not  be  intel- 
ligently denied. 

Many  a  time  a  pane  of  glass  has  been  broken  out,  or  a 
shingle  has  been  blown  from  the  roof,  and  the  repair  has  not 
been  made  for  weeks  or  many  months  together ;  and  for  want 
of  it  have  come  agonizing  neuralgias ;  or  a  child  has  waked 
up  in  the  night  with  the  croup,  to  get  well  only  with  a  doctor's 
bill,  which  would  have  paid  twenty  times  for  the  repair ;  even 
if  a  first-born  has  not  died,  to  agonize  a  mother's  heart  to  the 
latest  hour  of  life ;  or  the  leak  in  the  roof  has  remained,  re- 
quiring the  placing  of  a  bucket,  or  the  washing  of  the  floor  at 
every  rain ;  or  the  "  spare  bed  "  has  been  wetted  and  forgotten  ; 
some  visitor,  or  kind  neighbor,  or  dear  friend  has  been  placed 
in  it,  to  wake  up  to  a  fatal  fever,  as  was  the  case  with  the 
great  Lord  Bacon. 

Brutalities  are  thoughtlessly  sometimes,  and  sometimes 
recklessly,  perpetrated  by  farmers  on  their  wives,  as  follows : 
A  child,  or  other  member  of  the  family  is  taken  sick  in  the 
night ;  the  necessary  attention  almost  invariably  falls  on  the 
wife,  to  be  extended  to  a  greater  part,  if  not  the  whole  night. 
Wearied  with  the  previous  day's  duties,  with  those  solicitudes 
which  always  attend  sickness,  with  the  responsibilities  of  the 
occasion,  and  a  loss  of  requisite  rest,  the  wife  is  many  times 
expected  to  "  see  to  breakfast"  in  the  morning,  as  if  nothing 
had  happened.  The  husband  goes  to  his  work,  soon  becomes 
absorbed  in  it,  and  forgets  all  about  the  previous  night's 


522  FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

disturbance ;  meets  his  wife  at  the  dinner-table ;  notices  not 
the  worn-out  expression  on  her  face  ;  makes  no  inquiry  as  to 
her  feelings  ;  and  if  anything  on  or  about  the  table  is  not  just 
exactly  as  it  ought  to  be,  it  is  noticed  with  a  harshness  which 
would  be  scarcely  excusable  if  it  had  been  brought  about  with 
a  deliberate  calculation. 

The  same  thing  occurs  multitudes  of  times  during  the  nurs- 
ing periods  of  mothers ;  how  many  nights  a  mother's  rest  is 
broken  half  a  dozen  times  by  a  restless,  crying,  or  ailing  infant, 
every  mother  and  observant  man  knows ;  in  such  cases,  the 
farmer  goes  into  another  room,  and  sleeps  soundly  until  the 
morning ;  and  yet,  in  too  many  cases,  although  this  may  be, 
and  is  repeated  several  nights  in  succession,  the  husband  does 
not  hesitate  to  wake  his  wife  up  with  the  information  that  it  is 
nearly  sunrise  ;  the  meaning  of  which  is,  that  he  expects  her  to 
get  up  and  attend  to  her  duties.  No  wonder  that,  in  many  of 
our  lunatic  asylums,  there  are  more  farmers'  wives  than  any 
other  class  ;  for  there  is  no  fact  in  medical  science  more  posi- 
tively ascertained,  than  that  insufficient  sleep  is  the  most 
speedy  and  certain  road  to  the  madhouse  ;  let  no  farmer,  then, 
let  no  mechanic,  let  no  man,  who  has  any  human  sympathy 
still  left,  allow  his  wife  to  be  waked  up  in  the  morning,  except 
from  very  urgent  causes ;  and  further,  let  them  give  every 
member  of  the  household  to  understand  that  quietude  about  the 
premises  is  to  be  secured  always  until  the  wife  leaves  her 
chamber ;  thus  having  all  the  sleep  which  nature  will  take,  the 
subsequent  energy,  cheerfulness,  and  activity  which  will  fol- 
low, will  more  than  compensate  for  the  time  required  to  "  get 
her  sleep  out,"  not  only  as  to  her  own  efficiency,  but  as  to 
that  of  every  other  member  of  the  household ;  for  let  it  be 
remembered  that  a  merry  industry  is  contagious. 

There  are  not  a  few  farmers  whose  imperious  wills  will  not 
brook  the  very  slightest  dereliction  of  duty  on  the  part  of  any 
hand  in  their  employ;  and  whose  force  of  character  is  such, 
that  everything  on  the  farm,  outside  the  house,  goes  on  like 
clockwork.  They  look  to  their  wives  to  have  similar  man- 
agement indoors ;  and  are  so  swift  to  notice  even  slight 
shortcomings,  that  at  length  their  appearance  at  the  family 
table  has  become  inseparable  from  scenes  of  jarring,  fault- 
tinding,  sneering,  depreciating  comparisons,  if  not  of  coarse 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  523 

vituperation,  of  which  a  savage  might  well  be  ashamed ;  and 
all  this,  simply  from  the  failure  to  remember  that  they  have 
done  nothing  to  make  the  wife's  authority,  in  her  domain,  as 
imperative  as  their  own  ;  they  make  no  account  of  the  possible 
accidents  of  green  wood  to  cook  with ;  of  an  adverse  wind 
which  destroys  the  draught  of  the  chimney ;  of  the  breaking 
down  of  the  butcher's  cart,  or  the  failure  of  the  baker  to  come 
in  time ;  they  never  inquire  if  the  grocer  has  not  an  inferior 
article,  or  an  accident  has  befallen  the  stove  or  some  cooking 
utensil.  It  is  in  such  ways  as  these,  and  millions  more  like 
them,  that  the  farmer's  wife  has  her  whole  existence  poisoned 
by  those  daily  tortures  which  come  from  her  husband's  thought- 
lessness, his  inconsideration,  his  hard  nature,  or  his  down- 
right stupidity.  A  wife  naturally  craves  her  husband's  ap- 
probation. "Thy  desire  shall  be  to  thy  husband,"  is  the  lan- 
guage of  Scripture ;  which,  whatever  may  be  the  specific 
meaning  of  the  quotation,  certainly  carries  the  idea  that  she 
looks  up  to  him,  with  a  yearning  inexpressible,  for  comfort, 
for  support,  for  smiles  and  sympathy  ;  and  when  she  does  not 
get  these,  the  whole  world  else  is  a  waste  of  waters,  or  life  a 
desert,  as  barren  of  sustenance  as  the  great  Sahara.  But  this 
is  only  half  the  sorrow ;  when  in  addition  to  this  want  of 
approbation  and  sympathy,  there  comes  the  thoughtless  com- 
plaint; the  remorseless  and  repeated  fault-tinding,  and  the 
contemptuous  gesture,  when  all  was  done  that  was  possible 
under  the  circumstances  —  in  the  light  of  treatment  like  this, 
it  is  not  a  wonder  that  settled  sadness  and  hopelessness  is 
impressed  on  the  face  of  many  a  farmer's  wife,  which  is  con- 
sidered by  the  thoughtful  physician  as  the  prelude  to  that 
early  wasting  away,  which  is  the  lot  of  many  a  virtuous,  and 
faithful,  and  conscientious  woman. 

The  attentive  reader  will  not  fail  to  have  observed,  that  the 
derelictions  adverted  to,  on  the  part  of  farmer  husbands,  are 
not  regarded  necessarily  as  the  result  of  a  perverse  nature ; 
but  rather,  in  the  main,  from  inconsideration  or  ignorance  ; 
but  from  whatever  cause,  the  effect  is  an  unmixed  evil ;  and  it 
is  to  be  hoped  that  our  religious  papers,  and  all  agricultural 
publications,  will  persistently  draw  attention  to  these  things, 
so  as  to  excite  a  higher  sentiment  in  this  direction.  It  can  be 
done  and  ought  to  be  done ;  and  high  praise  is  justly  due  to 


524  FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

the  Honorable  the  Commissioner  of  the  Agricultural  Depart- 
ment, in 'that  he  has  expressly  desired  that  an  article  should 
be  written  on  the  subject  of  the  hardships  and  the  unnecessary 
exposures  of  farmers'  wives,  to  the  end  that  information  and 
instruction  should  be  imparted  in  this  direction ;  it  is  at  once 
an  evidence  of  a  high  and  manly  and  generous  nature. 

There  are  some  suggestions  to  be  made  with  a  view  to  light- 
ening the  load  of  farmers'  wives,  the  propriety,  the  wisdom, 
and  advantages  of  which,  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  on  every 
intelligent  mind. 

1.  A  timely  supply  of  all  that  is  needed  about  a  farmer's 
house  and  family,  is  of  incalculable  importance ;  and  when  it 
is  considered  that  most  of  these  things  will  cost  less  to  get 
them  in  season,  and  also  that  a  great  deal  of  unnecessary 
labor  can  be  avoided  by  so  doing,  it  would  seem  only  neces- 
sary to  bring  the  fact  distinctly  before  the  farmer's  mind,  to 
secure  an  immediate,  an  habitual,  and  a  life-long  attention. 
The  work  necessary  to  keep  a  whole  household  in  easily  run- 
ning order,  is  very  largely  curtailed  by  having  everything 
provided    in  time,  and   by  taking  advantage  of  those  little 
domestic  improvements  devised  by  busy  brains,  and  which  are 
brought  to  public  notice  weekly,  in  the  columns  of  such  papers 
as  the  Scientific  American,  of  New  York,  for  two  dollars  a 
year ;  in  fact,  it  is  of  such  a  practical  nature  as  to  household 
matters,  that  the  writer  has  heretofore  repeatedly  suggested  its 
patronage  to  the  agricultural  community,  in  spite  of  its  re- 
pelling name  to  the  more  unlearned  folk,  who  too  often  attach 
the  idea  of  abstruseness,  of  difficulty  of  apprehension,  to  any- 
thing which   has  the  word   "scientific"  attached  to  it;  not 
knowing  that  it  is  the  very  essence  of  true  science,  its  end 
and  aim,  to   bring  all  truth  to  the  easy  comprehension  of 
ordinary  minds. 

2.  It  requires  less  time  and  less  labor  to  have  the  winter's 
wood  for   house-heating  and  cooking  brought  into  the  yard, 
and  piled  up  cosily  under  a  shed,  or  placed  in  a  wood-house, 
in  November,  than  to  put  it  off  until  the  ground  is  saturated 
with  water,  allowing  the  wheels  to  sink  to  the  hub  in  mud ;  or 
until  the  snow  is  so  deep  as  to  make  wheeling  impossible. 

3.  It  is  incalculably  better  to  have  the  potatoes  and  other 
vegetables  gathered  and  placed  in  the  cellar,  or  in  an  out-house 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  525 

near  by  in  the  early  fall,  so  that  the  cook  may  get  at  them 
under  cover,  than  to  put  it  off,  week  after  week,  until  near 
Christmas ;  compelling  the  wife  and  servants,  once  or  twice 
every  day,  to  leave  a  heated  kitchen,  and,  most  likely,  with 
thin  shoes,  go  to  the  garden  with  a  tin  pan  and  a  hoe,  to  dig 
them  out  of  the  wet  ground,  and  bring  them  home  in  slosh  or 
rain.  The  truth  is,  it  perils  the  life  of  the  hardiest  persons, 
while  working  over  the  fire  in  cooking  or  washing,  to  go  out- 
side the  door  of  the  kitchen  for  an  instant ;  a  damp,  raw  wind 
may  be  blowing,  which,  coming  upon  an  inner  garment,  throws 
a  chill,  or  the  clamminess  of  the  grave  over  the  whole  body 
in  an  instant  of  time,  to  be  followed  by  the  reaction  of  fever, 
or  fatal  congestion  of  the  lungs ;  or,  by  making  a  single  step 
in  the  mud,  which  is,  in  tens  of  thousands  of  cases,  allowed 
to  accumulate  at  the  very  door-sill,  for  want  of  a  board  or  two, 
or  a  few  flat  stones,  not  a  rod  away. 

4.  No  farmer's  wife,  who  is  a  mother,  ought  to  be  allowed 
to  do  the  washing  of  the  family ;  it  is  perilous  to  any  woman 
who  has  not  a  vigorous  constitution.     The  farmer,  if  too  poor 
to  afford  help  for  that  purpose,  had  better  exchange  a  day's 
work  himself.     There  are  several  dangers  to  be  avoided  while 
at  the  tub,  —  it  requires  a  person  to  stand  for  hours  at  a  time  ; 
this  is  a  strain  upon  the  young  wife  or  mother  which  is  espe- 
cially perilous  ;  besides,  the  evaporation  of  heat  from  the  arms, 
by  being  put  in  warm  water  and  then  raised  in  the  air  alter- 
nately, so  rapidly  cools  the  system,  that  inflammation  of  the 
lungs  is  a  very  possible  result ;  then,  the  labor  of  washing 
excites  perspiration  and  induces  fatigue ;  in  this  condition  the 
body  is  so  susceptible  to  taking  cold,  that  a  few  moments' 
rest  in  a  chair,  or  exposure  to  a  very  slight  draught  of  air,  is 
quite  enough  to  cause  a  chill,  with  results  painful,  or  even 
dangerous,  according  to  the  particular  condition  of  the  system 
at  the  time.     No  man  has  a  right  to  risk  his  wife's  health  in 
this  way,  however  poor,  if  he  has  vigorous  health  himself; 
and,  if  poor,  he  cannot  afford,  for  the  five  or  six  shillings 
which  would  pay  for  a  day's  washing,  to  risk  his  wife's  health, 
her  time  for  two  or  three  weeks,  and  the  incurring  of  a  doc- 
tor's bill,  which  it  may  require  painful  economies  for  months 
to  liquidate. 

5.  Every  farmer  owes  it  to  himself,  in  a  pecuniary  point  of 


526  FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED. 

view,  and  to  his  wife  and  children,  as  a  matter  of  policy  and 
affection,  to  provide  the  means  early  for  clothing  his  house- 
hold according  to  the  seasons,  so  as  to  enable  them  to  prepare 
against  winter  especially.  Every  winter  garment  should  be 
completed  by  the  first  of  November,  ready  to  be  put  on  when 
the  first  winter  day  comes.  In  multitudes  of  cases  valuable 
lives  have  been  lost  to  farmers'  families  by  improvidence  as  to 
this  point.  Most  special  attention  should  be  given  to  the  un- 
der-clothing ;  that  should  be  prepared  first,  and  enough  of 
it  to  have  a  change  in  case  of  an  emergency  or  accident. 
Many  farmers  are  even  niggardly  in  furnishing  their  wives 
the  means  for  such  things ;  it  is  far  wiser  and  safer  to  stint 
the  members  of  his  family  in  their  food,  than  in  the  timely  and 
abundant  supply  of  substantial  under-clothing  for  winter  wear. 
It  would  save  an  incalculable  amount  of  hurry  and  its  attend- 
ant vexatious,  and  also  of  wearing  anxiety,  if  farmers  were 
to  supply  their  wives  with  the  necessary  material  for  winter 
clothing  as  early  as  midsummer.  In  this  connection  it  would 
be  well  for  farmers  to  learn  a  lesson  of  thrift  from  some  of 
our  long-headed  city  housewives  ;  it  is,  particularly,  the  habit 
of  the  well-to-do,  the  forehanded,  and  the  rich,  by  which  they 
legally  and  rightfully  get  at  least  twenty  per  cent,  for  their 
money  ;  it  is,  simply,  to  purchase  the  main  articles  of  clothing 
at  the  close  of  any  season,  to  be  made  up  and  worn  the  cor- 
responding season  of  next  year.  Merchants  uniformly  aim, 
especially  in  cities,  to  "close  out"  their  stocks,  for  example, 
for  the  winter,  at  the  end  of  winter  or  beginning  of  spring ; 
theyconsider.it  profitable  to  sell  out  the  remnant  of  their 
winter  stock  in  March,  at  even  less  than  cost ;  for,  on  what 
they  get  for  these  remnants,  they  make  three  profits,  —  on  tho 
spring,  the  summer,  and  the  fall  goods ;  whereas,  had  they 
laid  by  their  winter  stock,  they  would  have  had  but  ono 
profit,  from  which  would  have  to  be  deducted  the  yearly  in- 
terest, storage,  and  insurance.  Thus,  by  purchasing  clothing 
materials  six  or  eight  months  beforehand,  the  farmer  not  only 
saves  from  twenty  to  forty  per  cent  of  the  first  cost,  but  gives 
his  wife  the  opportunity  of  working  upon  them  at  such  odds 
and  ends  of  time  as  would  otherwise  be  unemployed,  in  a 
measure,  and  would  enable  her,  also,  to  have  everything  done 
in  a  better  manner,  simply  by  having  abundant  time,  thus 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  527 

avoiding  haste,  vexation,  solicitude,  and  disappointment,  for 
nothing  so  clouds  a  household  as  a  sense  of  being  behindhand, 
and  of  the  necessity  of  painful  hurry  and  effort. 

6.  Few  things  will  bring  a  more  certain  and  happy  reward, 
than  for  him  to  remember  his  wife  is  a  social  being,  that  she 
is  not  a  machine,  and,  therefore,  needs  rest,  and  recreation, 
and  change.     No  farmer  will  lose  in  the  long  run,  either  in 
money,  health,  or  domestic   comfort,  enjoyment  and  down- 
right happiness,  by  allotting  one  afternoon  in  each  week,  from 
midday  until  bedtime,  to  visiting  purposes.     Let  him,  with 
the  utmost  cheerfulness  and  heartiness,  leave  his  work,  dress 
himself  up,  and  take  his  wife  to  some  pleasant  neighbor's, 
friend's,  or  kinsman's  house,  for  the  express  purpose  of  relax- 
ation from  the  cares  and  toils  of  home,  and  for  the  interchange 
of  friendly  feelings  and  sentiments,  and  also  as  a  means  of 
securing  that  change  of  association,  air,  and  food,  and  mode  of 
preparation,  which  always  wakes  up  the  appetite,  invigorates 
digestion,  and  imparts  a  new  physical  energy,  at  once  delight- 
ful to  see  and  to  experience ;  all  of  which,  in  turn,  tend  to 
cultivate  the  mind,   nourish  the  affections,   and  to  promote 
that  breadth  of  view  in  relation  to  men  and  things  which  ele- 

.vates,  and  expands,  and  ennobles,  and  without  which  the 
whole  nature  becomes  so  narrow,  so  contracted,  so  jejune  and 
uninteresting,  that  both  man  and  woman  become  but  a  shadow 
of  what  they  ought  to  be. 

7.  Let  the  farmer  never  forget  that  his  wife  is  his  best 
friend,  the  most  steadfast  on  earth,  would  do  more  for  him 
in  calamity,  in  misfortune,  and  sickness,  than  any  other  hu- 
man being,  and  that  on  this  account,  to  say  nothing  of  tho 
marriage  vow,  made  before  high  heaven  and  before  men,  he 
owes  to  the  wife  of  his  bosom  a  consideration,  a  tenderness, 
a  support,  and  a  sympathy,  which  should  put  out  of  sight 
every  feeling  of  profit  and  loss  the  very  instant  they  come  in 
collision  with  his  wife's  welfare,  as  to  her  body,  her  mind, 
and  her  affections.     No  man  will  ever  lose  in  the  long  run  by 
so  doing;  he  will  not  lose   in  time,  will  not  lose  in  a  dying 
hour,  nor  in  that  great  and  mysterious  future  which  lies  be- 
fore all. 

8.  There  are  w  seasons"  in  the  life  of  women,  which,  as  to 
some  of  them,  so  affect  her  general  system,  and  her  mind  also, 


528  FARMERS'   WIVES  OVERTAXED. 

as  to  commend  them  to  our  warmest  sympathies,  and  which 
imperatively  demand  from  the  sterner  sex  the  same  patience, 
and  forbearance,  and  tenderness,  which  they  themselves  would 
want  meted  out  to  them  if  they  were  not  of  sound  mind.  At 
these  times,  some  women,  whose  uniform  good  sense,  propri- 
ety of  deportment  and  amiability  of  character  command  our 
admiration,  become  so  irritable,  fretful,  complaining,  quarrel- 
some, and  unlovely,  as  to  almost  drive  their  husbands  mad  ; 
their  conduct  is  so  inexplicable,  so  changed,  so  perfectly 
causeless,  that  they  are  almost  overcome  with  desperation, 
with  discouragement,  or  indignant  defiance  of  all  rules  of 
justice,  of  right,  or  of  humanity.  The  ancients,  noticing  this 
to  occur  to  some  women  for  a  few  days  in  every  month,  gave 
it  the  appellation  of  "  Lunacy,"  Luna  being  the  Latin  name 
for  moon  or  monthly.  Some  women,  at  such  times,  are  liter- 
ally insane,  without  their  right  mind  ;  and,  as  it  is  an  infliction 
of  nature,  far  be  it  from  any  husband,  with  the  feelings  of  a 
man,  to  fail,  at  such  times,  to  treat  his  wife  with  the  same 
kind  care,  and  extra  tenderness,  and  pitying  love,  that  he 
would  show  to  a  demented  only  child.  The  skilful  physician 
counsels,  in  such  cases,  the  scrupulous  avoidance  of  every 
word,  or  action,  or  even  look,  which,  by  any  possibility, 
could  irritate  the  mind,  excite  the  brain,  or  wound  the  sensi- 
bilities, and,  as  far  as  possible,  to  yield,  gracefully  and  good- 
naturedly,  to  every  whim  and  every  caprice,  to  seem  to  con- 
trol iu  nothing,  to  yield  in  all  things ;  under  these  calming 
influences  the  mind  sooner  resumes  its  wonted  rule,  the  heart 
gushes  out  in  new  loves,  and  wakes  up  to  a  warmer  affection 
than  was  ever  known  before.  A  misunderstanding  of  the  case, 
and  an  impatient  resistance  at  .all  points,  has,  before  now, 
driven  women  to  desperation,  to  a  life-long  hate,  to  suicide, 
or  to  a  fate  worse  than  all,  — to  peer  through  the  iron  bars  of 
a  lunatic's  cell  for  a  long  and  miserable  lifetime.  Let  every 
husband  who  has  a  human  heart  mature  the  subject  well. 

9.  In  these  and  other  peculiar  states  of  the  system,  arising 
from  nervous  derangement,  women  are  sometimes  childish, 
and  various  curious  phenomena  take  place  ;  there  is  an  inabil- 
ity to  speak  for  a  moment  or  a  month,  the  heart  seems  to 
"jump  up  in  the  mouth,"  or  there  is  a  terrible  feeling  of  im- 
pending suffocation  ;  at  other  times  there  are  actual  convul- 


FARMERS'   WIVES   OVERTAXED.  529 

sions,  or  an  uncontrollable  bursting  out  into  tears  ;  these,  and 
other  disagreeable  phenomena,  are  derisively  and  unfeelingly 
called  "hysterics,"  or  "nervousness;"  but  they  are  no  more 
unreal  to  the  sufferer  than  are  the  pains  of  extraction  for 
"  nothing  but  the  toothache."  These  symptoms  are  not  un- 
frequently  set  down  to  the  account  of  perverseness,  when  it 
should  no  more  be  done  than  to  call  it  perversity  to  break  out 
in  uncontrollable  grief  at  the  sudden  information  of  the  death 
of  the  dearest  friend  on  earth.  The  course  of  conduct  to  be 
pursued  in  cases  of  this  kind  is  at  once  the  dictate  of  science, 
of  humanity,  and  of  common  sense ;  it  is  to  sympathize  with 
and  soothe  the  patient  in  all  ways  possible,  until  the  excess  of 
perturbation  has  passed  away,  and  the  system  calms  down  to 
its  natural,  even  action. 

10.  Unless  made  otherwise  by  a  vicious  training,  a  woman 
is  as  naturally  tasteful,  tidy,  and  neat  in  herself,  and  as  to  all 
her  surroundings,  as  the  beautiful  canary  which  bathes  itself 
every  morning,  and  will  not  be  satisfied  until  each  rebellious 
feather  is  compelled  to  take  the  shape  and  place  which  nature 
designed.  It  is  nothing  short  of  brutality  to  war  against 
those  pure,  elevating,  and  refining  instincts  of  a  woman's  bet- 
ter nature  ;  and  it  is  a  husband's  highest  duty,  his  interest, 
and  should  be  his  pleasure  and  his  pride,  to  sympathize  with 
his  wife  in  the  cultivation  of  these  instincts,  and  to  cheerfully 
afford  her  the  necessary  means,  as  far  as  he  can  do  so  consis- 
tently. No  money  is  better  spent  on  a  farm,  or  anywhere 
else,  than  that  which  enables  the  wife  to  make  herself,  her 
children,  her  husband,  and  her  house  appear  fully  up  to  their 
circumstances.  The  consciousness  of  a  torn  or  buttonless 
jacket  or  soiled  dress  degrades  a  boy  or  girl  in  their  own  esti- 
mation ;  and  who  that  is  a  man  does  not  feel  himself  degraded 
under  the  consciousness  that  he  is  wearing  a  dirty  shirt?  The 
wife  who  is  worthy  of  the  name  will  never  allow  these  things 
if  she  is  provided  with  means  for  their  prevention  ;  and  it  is 
in  the  noble  endeavor  to  maintain,  for  herself  and  family,  a 
respectability  of  appearance  which  their  station  demands, 
with  means  and  help  far  too  limited,  which  so  irritates,  and 
chafes,  and  annoys  her  proper  pride,  that,  many  a  time,  the 
wife's  heart,  and  constitution,  and  health  are  all  broken  to- 
gether. This  is  the  history  of  multitudes  of  farmers'  wives ; 


530  WHEN  BEGAN  WEI 

and  the  niggardly  natures  which  allow  it,  after  taking  an  in- 
telligent view  of  the  subject,  are  simply  beneath  contempt. 
What  adds  to  the  better  appearance  of  the  person,  elevates  ; 
what  adds  to  the  better  appearance  of  a  farm,  increases  its 
value  and  the  respectability  of  the  occupant ;  so  that  it  is  al- 
ways a  good  investment,  morally  and  pecuniarily,  for  a  farmer 
to  supply  his  wife  generously  and  cheerfully,  according  to  his 
ability,  with  the  means  of  making  her  family  and  home  neat, 
tasteful,  and  tidy.  A  dollar's  worth  of  lime,  a  shilling  rib- 
bon, or  a  few  pennies'  worth  of  paint,  may  be  so  used  as  to 
give  an  impression  of  life,  of  cheerfulness,  and  of  thrift  about 
a  home  altogether  beyond  the  value  of  the  means  employed 
for  the  purpose. 

Finally,  let  the  farmer  always  remember  that  his  wife's 
cheerful  and  hearty  cooperation  is  essential  to  his  success,  and 
is  really  of  as  .much  value  in  attaining  it,  all  things  con- 
sidered, as  anything  that  he  can  do ;  and  as  she  is  very  cer- 
tainly his  superior  in  her  moral  nature,  it  legitimately  follows 
that  he  should  not  only  regard  her  as  his  equal  in  material 
matters,  but  should  habitually  accord  to  her  that  deference, 
that  consideration,  and  that  high  respect,  which  is  of  right 
her  due,  and  which  can  never  fail  to  impress  on  the  children 
and  servants,  who  daily  witness  it,  a  dignity  and  an  elevation 
of  manner,  and  thought,  and  feeling,  and  deportment,  which 
will  prove  to  all  who  see  them,  that  the  wife  is  a  lady  and 
the  husband  a  man,  a  gentleman  ;  and  a  large  pecuniary  suc- 
cess, with  a  high  moral  position  and  wide  social  influence, 
will  be  the  almost  certain  results. 


WHEN   BEGAN  WE? 

WE  end  never!  for  the  soul  is  immortal,  and  cannot  die. 
When  the  soul's  existence  commences  is  as  yet  a  conjecture. 
Nor  can  we  tell  when  the  immaterial  first  takes  up  its  dwelling 
with  the  material ;  when  the  soul  enters  the  body.  But  this 
we  do  know  :  that,  at  a  point  when  the  man  that  is  to  be  is 
so  minute  as  to  require  the  microscope  to  determine  whether 
it  exists  or  not,  the  first  faint  outlines  of  the  new  being  are 


WHEN  BEGAN  WEI  531 

defined  to  be  a  nervous  system.  The  very  first  step  cogniza- 
ble to  us,  which  nature  takes  to  make  a  mau  a  living  soul,  is 
to  prepare  the  machinery,  so  to  speak,  through  which  that 
soul  js  to  manifest  itself.  It  is  the  nervous  system  which  first 
begins  to  live,  and  to  appropriate  to  itself  those  materials  of 
growth  which  eveutually  become  the  human  body,  and  make 
a  man.  Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  the  nervous  system 
of  the  new  being  is  connected  with  and  is  dependent  on  that 
of  the  parent,  and  that  the  hues,  the  impressions  of  the  young, 
depend  on  the  character  of  those  of  the  parent.  If,  at  this 
time,  the  parent  is  in  perfect  health,  and  so  remains,  it  is  fair 
to  presume  that  the  child  will  be  born  in  perfect  health,  body 
and  mind.  These  statements  make  the  strongest  possible  ap- 
peal to  all  who  may  become  mothers,  to  make  it  their  constant 
study,  their  steady  aim  and  effort,  to  secure  a  healthful  con- 
dition of  the  body,  and  a  state  of  mind  which  shall  be,  uni- 
formly, all  that  the  mother  desires  the  child  to  possess  —  piety, 
integrity,  dignity,  and  an  elevation  of  soul  which  proves  re- 
lationship to  the  Infinite.  If  the  mother  that  is  to  be,  wishes 
her  child  to  possess  vigorous,  manly  health,  she  must  cultivate 
the  strictest  personal  cleanliness,  extending  to  the  most  mi- 
nute item  pertaining  to  the  human  body ;  she  must  eat  with 
regularity,  not  oftener  than  thrice  a  day ;  she  must  keep  her 
feet,  by  all  possible  means,  always  dry  and  warm ;  her  sleep 
must  be  early,  and  of  the  greatest  abundance  that  nature  can 
possibly  take  out  of  daylight ;  one  half  of  each  day  should  be 
spent  in  open-air  activities  ;  and  nearly  all  the  time  of  in-doors 
should  be  employed  in  cheerful,  interesting,  active  work,  con- 
stantly diversified,  so  as  not  to  overtax  one  set  of  muscles, 
and  leave  others  comparatively  idle.  The  very  best  course 
to  pursue  is,  to  take  a  part  in  everything  going  on,  in 
fact,  "  everything  by  turns,  but  nothing  long."  One  of  the 
most  important  items  of  advice  that  can  be  given  in  this  con- 
nection is,  that  an  hour  or  two  should  be  spent  in  walking  in 
the  open  air,  at  two  or  three  different  times,  until  the  very 
last.  Nothing  so  certainly,  so  safely,  and  so  pleasantly  con- 
tributes to  an  easy  deliverance.  A  volume  could  be  given  of 
the  most  strikingly  illustrative  facts,  but  the  single  sentence 
must  suffice.  Let  it  be  pondered  well ;  let  the  father  insist 
upon  it,  encourage  it,  and  do  all  he  can  to  make  its  perform- 


532  WEEN  BEGAN  WE* 

ance  easy  and  agreeable.  These,  with  regular  daily,  bodily 
habits,  would  add,  incalculably,  to  the  sum  total  of  human 
happiness ;  whilst  by  their  neglect,  by  simply  passing  the 
time  in  eating,  lounging,  and  listlessness,  in  the  wearing,  irri- 
tating inactivities  of  a  boarding-house,  or  hotel  life,  monsters 
in  bodily  shape,  and  imbeciles  in  mind,  are  constantly  thrown 
out  on  society,  to  be  disgusted  by  their  presence,  or  to  be 
taxed  by  their  confinement  in  some  insane  retreat,  or  some 
friendly  asylum. 

As  certainly  as  one  end  of  a  telegraph-wire  is  answered  at 
the  other,  so  certainly  do  the  nervous  conditions  of  the  new 
being  and  the  parent  answer  to  one  another,  only  with  this 
difference  :  the  telegraph  responds  from  either  end  ;  in  the 
case  in  hand,  influences  go  out  from  the  parent  only.  What 
kind  of  a  character,  then,  shall  be  impressed  on  the  coming 
man  depends  upon  the  abiding  states  of  mind  of  the  mother. 
The  material  was  made  to  her  hand  ;  it  is  her  part  to  mould 
it ;  to  her  are  the  destinies  of  this  coming  man  committed,  and 
the  responsibilities  are  fearful.  She  gives  the  hues  to  an  ex- 
istence which  is  immortal,  and  which  it  must  bear  for  good 
or  ill  all  along  the  way  of  that  immortality,  saving  the  modi- 
fications which  Divinity  may  make.  The  true  mother,  then, 
will  not,  at  such  an  interesting,  such  a  momentous  period  of 
her  existence,  allow  her  mind  to  be  absorbed  in  questions  of 
what  she  shall  eat  and  what  she  shall  drink,  and  thus  give  a 
gourmand  to  the  world  ;  she  will  not  luxuriate  in  the  frivoli- 
ties of  dress,  in  the  study  of  the  fashions,  the  dissipations  of 
society,  nor  yield  herself  to  the  seductions  of  the  courtier,  the 
flatterer,  and  the  ladies'  man,  and  thus  add  another  to  the 
throng  of  the  giddy-minded,  the  empty-headed,  and  the  inane  ; 
nor  let  her  pine  in  pettishness  and  anger  for  what  is  now 
beyond  her  reach,  —  for  a  position  in  circles  and  sets  above 
her  present  sphere  ;  let  her  not  call  in  question  the  wisdom, 
the  benevolence,  or  the  justice  of  the  wise  and  kind  Father 
of  all  for  her  allotment  in  life  ;  let  her  not  employ  the  mind  in 
irritating  and  wearing  envies  and  jealousies,  in  carping  criti- 
cisms, in  wearing,  wasting  complaints,  in  oppressive  forebod- 
ings of  ills  to  come  ;  let  her,  on  the  contrary,  war  against  all 
these  with  the  whole  energy  of  her  nature,  regarding  them  as 
her  worst  enemies,  and  the  bane  of  domestic  life.  Let  her 


CURIOSITIES  OF  BREAD.  533 

constantly  look  at  the  sunshine  and  the  sky,  the  leaf  and  the 
flower ;  let  her  take  the  first  step  towards  all  true  elevation, 
the  contemplation  of  individual  unworthiness  of  any  blessing 
the  merciful  One  could  bestow ;  then  look  around  upon  the 
innumerable  ones  enjoyed ;  and  next  wake  up  in  gladsome 
gratitude,  that  such  a  profusion  of  goodness  should  come  to 
one  so  insignificant,  from  the  generous  hand  of  Omnipotence. 
Then  there  will  begin  to  flow  in  upon  the  heart,  all  the  time, 
a  perfect  flood  of  elevating  emotions ;  there  will  be  joy  and 
gladness  ;  there  will  be  life  and  light ;  there  will  be  mirth  and 
song ;  there  will  be  mercy  and  magnanimity ;  there  will  be 
sympathy  and  beneficence ;  and  purity  and  truth,  generosity 
and  nobleness  of  nature,  will  color  the  whole  character,  to  be 
perpetuated  in  a  long  line  of  generations  to  come.  A  mother's 
responsibility!  who  can  measure  it?  She  has  the  moulding 
of  the  race,  for  good  or  ill,  in  a  measure  second  only  to  the 
God  who  made  her !  And  honored  far,  far  above  kings,  and 
conquerors,  and  potentates,  be  she,  however  lowly  may  be 
her  position  among  the  millions  of  earth,  who  most  deeply 
feels  these  responsibilities,  and  who  most  humbly  endeavors 
to  perform  them  according  to  her  ability,  leaning,  meanwhile 
and  always,  on  Him  whose  kingdom  ruleth  over  all. 


CUEIOSITIES  OF  BREAD. 

THERE  is  Divine  authority  for  saying  that  "  bread  is  the 
staff  of  life."  As  to  food,  it  is  our  main  stay;  we  never  get 
tired  of  it ;  it  is  always  palatable  when  we  are  hungry,  as  is 
cold  water  when  we  are  thirsty.  But  cold  water  is  made 
more  refreshing,  and  bread  is  made  more  nutritious,  by  the 
introduction  of  a  gas,  which,  if  breathed  into  the  lungs  in  its 
unmixed,  pure  state,  causes  instant  death. 

We  turn  with  disgust  from  eating  anything  that  is  rotten, 
that  is,  in  a  state  of  decay  ;  and  yet,  in  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  "loaf"  upon  our  tables  is  itself  rotten  in 
part,  —  the  product  of  rottenness  and  whiskey  !  But  a  new 
light  has  risen  upon  our  world ;  for  bread  is  now  made  which 


534  CURIOSITIES   OF  BREAD. 

contains  no  alcohol ;  which  does  not  require  any  putrefactive 
process,  contains  no  alum,  nor  soda,  nor  saleratus  ;  no  emana- 
tion from  the  sweaty  hands  of  a  greasy  cook,  nor  aught  of 
those  ten  semicircular  lines  of  black  which  bound  the  digital 
extremities  of  the  queen  of  the  kitchen  ;  nor  does  it  ever_be- 
come  sodden  or  sour.  This  new  bread  is  made  of  flour  and 
water,  into  which,  when  mixed,  is  forced  carbonic  acid  gas, 
which,  although  so  deadly  to  the  lungs,  makes  all  the  differ- 
ence between  the  sparkling  water  of  the  spring  and  the  flatness 
of  long-standing  water,  or  that  which  has  been  once  warmed ; 
furthermore,  from  the  time  the  flour  is  taken  from  the  mill, 
until  the  loaf  is  baked,  human  hands  do  not  touch  it. 

Now,  however  much  the  mouths  of  our  country  friends  may 
water  at  the  very  thought  of  so  deliciously  pure  and  clean  an 
article,  they  must  prepare  themselves  for  some  disappoint- 
ment at  the  announcement,  that  it  is  said  not  to  be  economi- 
cally made,  except  in  large  quantities.  If  every  family  made 
its  own  bread  in  this  way,  the  great  big  bakery,  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  way,  would  collapse  immediately. 

But  how  has  "light  bread"  been  made  hitherto?  By  the 
aid  of  this  same  carbonic  acid  gas,  and  in  this  wise :  If  water 
is  mixed  with  flour  simply,  and  the  dough  is  thus  baked,  it  is 
as  heavy  as  lead  and  as  hard  as  a  rock,  because  the  flour  is 
so  fine  the  particles  lie  close  together,  and  form  a  compact, 
sodden  mass  ;  hence  it  became  necessary,  in  order  to  have  the 
bread  "  light,"  to  introduce  something  between  the  particles  of 
flour,  so  as  to  keep  them  apart,  and  allow  the  heat  to  get 
around  them  and  "cook"  them.  To  accomplish  this,  an 
agency  was  necessary,  as  subtile  and  unsubstantial  as  thin  air 
itself;  otherwise  the  heat  would  be  kept  away  from  each  par- 
ticle of  flour,  and  would  as  effectually  prevent  the  process  of 
cooking  as  would  the  flour  itself.  To  this  end,  some  ancient 
gourmand  set  his  wits  to  work,  or  else,  by  some  fortunate 
accident,  made  the  discovery  that  "  rising,"  or  "yeast,"  intro- 
duced into  the  dough,  and  allowed  to  remain  for  a  few  hours, 
accomplished  the  object.  Whether  he  got  out  a  patent  forth- 
with, or  more  generously  spread  his  knowledge  on  the  wings 
of  the  wind,  —  as  we  doctors  do,  as  soon  as  we  are  satisfied, 
beyond  all  mistake  or  cavil,  that  some  valuable  new  remedy 


CURIOSITIES   OF  BREAD.  535 

has  been  discovered,  —  cannot  now  be  known  ;  at  all  events, 
the  patent  has  long  since  run  out,  and  yeast,  and  rising,  and 
leaven  are  all  public  property. 

Fermentation  and  rottening  are  the  vulgar  and  select  names 
for  one  and  the  same  thing,  meaning  "destructive  decay," 
decomposition.  When  a  thing  is  fermenting,  bubbles  are  seen 
forming,  and  rising,  and  breaking ;  each  bubble  contains  a 
light,  thin  air,  called  carbonic-acid  gas  ;  this  gas,  when  a  little 
warmed,  begins  to  rise  up  through  the  dough,  and  would  go 
up  to  the  sky  instanter,  but  it  can't  get  out ;  it  is  a  regular 
prisoner  of  war ;  it  is  literally  bagged,  surrounded,  sewed- 
up,  cabined,  cribbed,  confined,  as  helpless  as  a  baby  until  it 
gets  big ;  then  it  breaks  away  in  high  dudgeon,  nolens  volens, 
and  scampers  off  to  the  regions  of  space.  In  the  mean  time, 
however,  the  bread  has  baked,  and  there  is  no  further  use  for 
the  prisoner  at  the  bar ;  in  fact,  the  more  speedily  he  makes 
off  with  himself  the  better ;  for  only  until  he  has  teetotally 
vamosed  the  ranche,  does  the  bread  become  "  stale,"  and 
really  fit  to  eat,  healthfully  speaking.  Hence  the  propriety 
of  exposing  a  new-baked  loaf  to  the  air. 

But  what  prevents  the  carbonic-acid  gas  from  escaping  the 
instant  it  is  formed?  Flour  contains  a  kind  of  glue  ;  the  gas, 
rising,  is  caught  by  this  glue,  in  the  manner  of  pushing  your 
finger  upward  tinder  a  spread  newspaper,  or  the  blowing  up 
of  soap-bubbles ;  each  particle  of  gas  expands  as  it  gets 
warmer,  and  tends  to  carry  away  the  detaining  particle  or 
sheet  of  gluten  before  it,  and  thus  is  made  the  numerous 
honey-comb  cells  which  are  seen  on  a  cut  loaf  of  bread.  The 
eye  can  even  discover,  on  the  side  of  a  large  cell,  a  glazy  or 
shiny  lining,  — this  is  the  dried  gluten,  bladder-like. 

If  the  heat  is  too  great,  the  carbonic-acid  gas  expands  too 
rapidly,  and  bursts  its  envelope,  as  soap-bubbles  will  burst 
if  you  blow  too  hard,  and  the  bread  will  be  heavy.  If  there 
is  not  warmth  enough,  the  dough  begins  to  decompose,  to  rot 
itself,  and  the  bread  is  sour.  But,  in  the  new  process,  the 
gas  is  forced  in  at  once ;  and  from  the  time  the  dough  is 
mixed,  until  the  bread  is  delivered  from  the  oven,  one  hour 
passes.  Hence,  as  no  sour  rising  or  yeast  is  put  in  the  dough, 
there  is  nothing  to  communicate  its  sourness,  and  no  time  is 


536  WHY  DON'T  HE  DIE1 

allowed  for  fermentation  to  be  originated.  This  is  the  only 
known  method  of  producing  absolutely  pure  wheaten  bread 
of  nature's  own  constituents ;  and  doubtless  the  time  will 
come  when  means  will  be  devised  for  making  "  aerated  bread," 
economically,  in  families. 


WHY  DON'T  HE  DIE  ? 

Pro  NONO,  according  to  newspaper  writers,  has  been,  pe- 
riodically, on  his  last  legs  for  at  least  half  an  age  ;  and  yet,  al- 
though born  in  1792,  and  has  had  a  stormy  reign,  Pius  the 
Ninth  still  lives,  because  he  is  a  philosopher.  In  the  first 
place,  he  has  great  benignity  of  disposition ;  writers  agree  in 
saying,  that,  on  the  very  first  instant  the  eyes  light  upon  his 
features,  an  indescribably  winning  effect  is  produced  from  the 
conviction  of  an  inherent  kindness  of  nature  dwelling  within; 
In  the  second  place,  the  venerable  Pontiff  has  an  extraordinary 
predilection  for  the  greatest  cleanliness  of  person,  which  is 
said  to  be  next  to  godliness.  In  the  third  place,  the  simplici- 
ty of  his  diet  is  a  model  for  all  mankind.  His  breakfast  is 
made  of  a  piece  of  bread  and  a  mixture  of  chocolate  and  coffee, 
at  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning.  He  dines  alone,  takes 
a  short  nap,  and  takes  a  drive,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
to  the  country,  where  he  walks  about  for  an  hour,  and  returns 
home  at  six  o'clock,  and  works  about  four  hours,  and  goes  to 
bed,  thus  not  eating  but  twice  a  day.  In  summer  time, 
the  former  Popes  used  to  order  refreshments  of  sherbets,  ice- 
creams, and  various  cooling  drinks  and  pastries ;  but  the 
Papal  head  takes  a  single  orange,  cuts  it  and  squeezes  it  in  a 
glass ;  and,  indeed,  there  is  nothing  better  to  cool  a  person 
off  in  a  warm  day  than  an  orange  or  a  lemon,  not  only  possess- 
ing considerable  nutriment,  but  containing  an  acid,  which,  in 
its  action  on  the  general  system,  is  the  very  best  antagonize!' 
of  fever.  It  is  said  that  the  "Holy  Father"  lives  as  simply 
and  economically  as  when  he  was  an  obscure  priest ;  that 
then  one  dollar  a  day  supplied  his  table,  and  so  it  does  now. 
The  practical  result  of  such  an  abstemious  life  is  that  "  His 


A   SAD  SE  FLECTION.  537 

Holiness,"  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven  years,  possesses  an 
excellent  constitution,  is  above  the  middle  stature,  has  a 
full,  broad  chest,  and  bids  fair  to  live  many  a  long  day  to 
come. 

If  any  man  or  woman  of  forty-five  or  over,  not  engaged  in 
hard  manual  labor,  especially  the  studious,  sedentary,  and  in- 
door livers,  would  take  but  two  meals  a  day  for  one  month, 
the  second  not  being  later  than  three  in  the  afternoon,  and 
absolutely  nothing  afterwards,  except  it  might  be,  in  some 
cases,  an  orange,  or  lemon,  or  cup  of  warm  drink,  such  as 
tea,  broma,  sugar-water,  or  ice-cream,  there  would  be  such  a 
change  for  the  better  in  the  way  of  sounder  sleep,  a  feeling, 
on  waking,  of  having  rested,  an  appetite  for  breakfast,  a  buoy- 
ancy of  disposition  during  the  day,  with  a  geniality  of  temper 
and  manner,  that  few,  except  the  animal  and  the  glutton, 
would  be  willing  to  go  back  to  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt. 


A  SAD  REFLECTION. 

ONE  of  the  heart-sorrows  which  few  parents  escape,  who 
live  to  see  their  children  nearly  grown,  is  the  early  disposi- 
tion, which  both  sons  and  daughters  show,  to  throw  off  parental 
control,  and  exercise  their  own  judgment  in  all  that  pertains 
to  practice  and  principle. 

Youth  is  vain,  hopeful,  dogmatic,  and  impatient.  At  six- 
teen, seventeen,  and  even  earlier,  they  have  already  regarded 
it  as  a  settled  fact  that  they  are  largely  wiser  than  those  who 
have  gone  before.  They  consider  it  as  a  weakness  to  be 
pitied ;  the  fears  and  misgivings  which  bitter  experience 
has  burnt  into  the  father's  and  mother's  heart  have  left  them 
all  cut  and  scarred.  If  the  counsels  are  given  in  the  stern- 
ness of  parental  right,  they  are  met  with  a  feeling  which  soon 
grows  into  defiance  ;  if  given  with  the  beseechings  of  a  mother's 
undying  affection,  which  still  clings  to  a  prayer,  when  com- 
mand, and  reason,  and  persuasion,  all  have  failed,  they  look 
down  on  this  deep  solicitude,  this  heart-breaking  anxiety, 
with  a  patronizing  pityingness,  and  with  silent  neglect  or  com- 


538  A   SAD  REFLECTION. 

passionate  smile,  mingled  with  a  feeling  amounting  almost 
to  contempt  for  such  useless  earnestness,  and  they  pass  stead- 
ily on  to  courses  which,  sooner  or  later,  work  out  their  irre- 
trievable ruin. 

On  a  beautiful  morning  of  the  past  spring-time,  Dr.  Al- 
exander, standing  at  our  door,  his  head  whitening  for  the 
grave,  and  into  which  he  has  already  passed,  said  in  tones  at 
once  earnest,  tremulous,  and  deep,  "I  cannot  induce  my  son 
to  forego  the  use  of  tobacco,  although  he  sees  in  his  father  its 
mischievous  effects." 

That  father  had  long  since,  with  the  will  as  well  as  with  the 
intellect  of  a  giant,  dashed  the  chain  of  habit  in  pieces,  doing 
it  the  moment  he  became  convinced  of  the  perniciousness  of 
the  practice,  but  not  soon  enough  to  have  escaped  the  impress 
of  its  disastrous  effects  in  enfeebled  limbs  and  palsied  trem- 
blings, and  that,  too,  when  the  hill-top  of  life  had  scarcely 
been  reached  as  to  years,  but,  in  reality,  as  to  him,  passed  a 
long  time  ago,  one  foot  being  already  in  the  grave,  the  other 
on  its  crumbling  verge. 

The  cruel  heedlessness  with  which  the  youth  of  our  time 
pass  by  the  known  wishes  of  their  parents,  as  to  what  their 
parents  well  know  would,  in  good  time,  add  to  their  comfort, 
happiness,  and  prosperity,  is  a  sign  of  the  times,  and  merits  a 
stern  rebuke. 

Parents  may  not  complain  of  such  neglect ;  they  may  not 
bring  it  distinctly  to  the  notice  of  their  wayward  children  ; 
but  their  hearts  are  wounded  for  all  that,  and  many  is  the  tear 
that  is  dropped  in  secret  for  that  selfsame  cause ;  and  the 
exclamation  breaks  up  from  the  depth  of  their  affliction,  "  Is 
it  for  this  I  have  suffered,  and  watched,  and  toiled  from  their 
infancy  up  ?  Is  it  for  this  I  have  practised  a  life-long  self- 
denial,  and  self-sacrifice,  and  weary,  wasting  labor,  until  my 
back  is  bent  with  years,  my  limbs  stiffened  with  work,  and  my 
hand  hard  as  bone  itself  ?  "  and  scalding  tears  flow  plenteously 
down,  else  the  overburdened  heart  would  break  in  its  agony. 

Let  every  child,  then,  having  any  pretence  to  heart,  or 
manliness,  or  piety,  and  who  is  so  fortunate  as  to  have  a 
father  or  mother  living,  consider  it  a  sacred  duty  to  consult, 
at  any  reasonable  personal  sacrifice,  the  known  wishes  of  such 


PURE  AIR  A  MEDICINE.  539 

a  parent,  until  that  parent  is  no  more ;  and  our  word  for  it, 
the  recollection  of  the  same,  through  the  after  pilgrimage  of 
life,  will  sweeten  every  sorrow,  will  brighten  every  gladness, 
will  sparkle  every  tear-drop,  with  a  joy  ineffable.  But  be  self- 
ish still,  have  your  own  way,  consult  your  own  inclinations, 
yield  to  the  bent  of  your  own  desires,  regardless  of  a  parent's 
commands,  and  counsels,  and  beseechings,  and  tears,  and  as 
the  Lord  liveth,  your  life  will  be  a  failure  ;  because  "  the  eye 
that  mocketh  at  his  father,  and  despiseth  to  obey  his  mother, 
the  ravens  of  the  valley  shall  pick  it  out,  and  the  young 
eagles  shall  eat  it." 


PURE  AIR  A  MEDICINE. 

ON  one  occasion  an  English  family  became  ill  in  midwinter. 
Medical  advice  was  obtained,  and  the  usual  remedies  applied 
for  a  long  time,  without  producing  any  marked  favorable 
change.  All  the  physicians  who  heard  of  the  circumstances 
were  greatly  puzzled  to  explain  the  case  satisfactorily,  even  to 
themselves.  At  length,  a  pane  of  glass  was  accidentally 
broken  in  the  only  room  of  the  house,  and  the  inmates  were 
so  much  taken  up  with  their  troubles,  that  it  was  either  not 
noticed,  or  there  was  not  time,  or  disposition,  or  ability,  to 
repair  the  damage.  All  at  once,  however,  the  sick  began  to 
improve ;  the  doctor's  eyes  were  simultaneously  opened  a 
little  wider,  and  he  gave  orders  to  let  the  window  alone,  with 
the  result,  that,  in  a  short  time,  every  member  was  entirely 
well. 

Let  every  invalid  who  is  as  "  'fraid  as  death  "  of  a  puff  of 
pure  air  bear  this  suggestive  incident  in  wise  remembrance, 
the  balance  of  his  days ;  or,  if  an  open  door  or  window  is  not 
practicable,  at  least  keep  open  the  fireplace,  and  either  have 
a  little  fire  in  it,  or  a  liberal  lamp,  or  a  brisk  jet  of  gas  burn- 
ing in  it ;  this  causes  a  draught  up  the  chimney,  and  is  a  safe, 
easy,  and  efficient  way  of  ventilating  any  sick-room —  a  ven- 
tilation which  would  save  valuable  lives  in  multitudes  of 
instances. 


540  POETRY,  MUSIC  AND  HEALTH. 


POETRY,  MUSIC,  AND   HEALTH. 

MANY  persons,  when  hungry,  are  so  "ugly "  and  irritable, 
that  they  remind  us  of  a  parcel  of  starving  pigs  called  up  to 
the  slop-trough  of  a  farmer's  kitchen;  they  will  grunt,  and 
push,  and  squeal,  and  bite  one  another  with  surprising  vigor, 
until  they  get  to  eating  fairly,  when  there  is  a  sudden  and  all- 
pervading  silence,  with  scarcely  any'  evidence  of  life,  except 
the  wagging  of  their  tails,  in  token  of  profound  satisfaction 
with  themselves  and  all  the  world ;  when  perfectly  filled,  they 
retire  in  dignified  silence,  and  take  their  siesta  on  the  sunny 
side  of  some  fence  or  wall,  in  the  most  benignant  humor  ima- 
ginable. 

Children  who  are  hungry  often  come  to  the  table  in  the 
same  mood  ;  and,  discreditable  as  the  announcement  may  seem, 
many  parents,  not  unpossessed  of  some  excellent  traits  of 
character,  exhibit,  on  their  entrance  into  the  dining-room,  such 
a  fretful  and  complaining  nature,  that  any  inquiry,  however 
kind,  courteous,  or  conciliating,  is  almost  sure  to  be  met  with 
an  insulting  silence,  an  impatient  reply,  or  a  downright  boor- 
ish rejoinder,  showing,  very  conclusively,  that  in  temper,  in 
disposition,  and  nature,  they  are  not  much  above  "  the  brutes 
which  perish."  Many  a  notable,  affectionate,  and  loving-heart- 
ed wife,  after  exercising  all  her  ingenuity  in  preparing  an 
inviting  meal  for  her  husband,  often  waits  patiently,  and  yet 
vainly,  for  some  expression  which  recognizes  her  fidelity  to 
household  duties ;  others,  more  unfortunate  still,  have  no  re- 
ward but  querulousness  and  ungracious  fault-finding.  When 
the  meal  is  over,  these  "  monster "  husbands  return  to  their 
''  right  mind,"  and  are  every  whit  as  gracious  and  good-natured 
as  any  other  pigs. 

There  are  some  who  are  subject  at  periods  to  an  ugliness  of 
disposition,  which  excites  a  conjecture  that  possibly  they  may 
be  "possessed  of  a  devil,"  sometimes  two  or  three,  or  more  — 
transiently,  at  least;  others  there  are,  beyond  all  question, 
who  have  always  had  that  companionship ;  and  forty  thousand 
woes  bo  to  the  unfortunate  individual  who  has  such  a  yoke- 
fellow,—  the  devil  of  habitual  itt^naiure,  beginning  with  the 


POETRY,  MUSIC,  AND  HEALTH.  541 

early  morning,  ceasing  only  with  the  exhaustion  which  gives 
sleep. 

There  was  known  to  be  a  cure  for  the  acute  form  of  this 
malady,  three  thousand  years  ago ;  for  it  was  said  of  a  certain 
king,  that  he  was  subject  to  these  "spells"  of  devilishness  ; 
and  that  on  one  occasion  the  evil  spirit  left  him,  and  he  "  was 
well,"  as  soon  as  the  skilful  and  handsome  son  of  Jesse  took 
down  his  harp  and  swept  its  strings  with  the  fingers  of  an 
amateur.  Whether  there  was  an  accompaniment  of  "  thoughts 
that  breathe  and  words  that  burn,"  is  not  certainly  known,  but 
as  David  has  written  some  of  the  sweetest,  and  some  of  the 
sublimest  poetry  which  has  fallen  from  the  pen  of  mortals,  it 
is  not  impossible  that  he  sang  when  he  played  ;  and  the  result 
certainly  was,  that  whether  it  was  music  or  recitation,  or  both, 
the  evil  spirit  was  put  to  flight,  and  the  royal  patient  was 
pronounced  "well,"  without  the  necessity  of  a  strait  jacket, 
pills,  castor  oil,  or  chloroform. 

It  is  the  fashion  of  the  times,  however,  to  take  it  for  granted, 
that  this  evil  spirit,  whose  origin  is  from  below,  the  spirit  of 
fretfulness,  of  dissatisfaction,  of  incessant  fault-finding,  and 
chronic  ill-nature,  as  exhibited  in  domestic  life,  can  by  no  pos- 
sibility exist  on  the  diviner  side  of  the  house ;  but,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  can  only  be  found  in  the  lords  of  creation;  hence,  or 
for  other  reasons,  every  mother  in  the  land  is  at  more  pains, 
and  has  more  solicitude  for  her  daughters'  musical  training, 
than  for  anything  else,  as  if  it  were  to  be  expected,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  that  all  husbands  had  to  be  exorcised.  And  it  is  a 
fact,  that  if  any  man  had  forty  thousand  Beelzebubs  tearing 
round  within  him,  making  a  very  Pandemonium  in  the  house- 
hold, every  individual  one  would  scamper  off  with  the  rapidity 
attributed  in  olden  times  to  a  shot  placed  in  particular  circum- 
stances on  a  shovel,  the  very  instant  that  Beauty's  voice 
swelled  the  notes,  and  tapered  fingers  swept  the  octaves. 

While,  therefore,  it  is  philosophical  to  have  our  daughters 
learn  music,  it  might  be  well  to  remember  that  "spirits  differ." 
Some  men  have  no  ear  for  music,  —  have  no  music  in  their 
souls,  —  while  all  have  more  or  less  of  human  nature;  more  or 
less  of  the  leaven  of  ill-temper,  of  impatience  and  wrathfulness, 
which  is  not  amenable  to  the  symphony  of  sweet  sounds,  but 
which  is  softened  down  to  the  lovingness  of  a  baby's  cooing  at 


542  POETRY,  MUSIC  AND  HEALTH. 

the  exhibition  of  a  little  common  sense ;  of  tidiness  of  person, 
of  worldly  prudence,  of  domestic  management,  and  household 
handiness  on  the  part  of  the  wife.  No  man  possessed  of  any 
force  of  character  can  bear  with  equanimity  the  daily  observa- 
tion of  the  fact,  that  what  he  brings  into  the  house  for  the  com- 
fort and  sustenance  of  his  family  is  not  taken  care  of,  is  de- 
stroyed by  unprincipled  servants,  or  used  with  a  criminal  lav- 
ishness  which  benefits  nobody,  and  yet  is  an  hourly  injury  to 
him,  inasmuch  as  the  fruit  of  his  labor  and  his  care  is  ruin- 
ously used. 

The  demon  of  deep  dissatisfaction  will  take  possession  of  the 
man  who  has  any  respect  for  himself,  his  family,  and  his  social 
position,  when  he  begins  to  find  out  that  his  wife  "has  no  taste 
for  housekeeping ; "  that  this  branch  of  domestic  duty  is  left 
entirely  to  the  servants,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  carpets 
are  moth-eaten  the  first  summer ;  the  costly  furniture,  in  six 
months,  looks  as  if  it  had  been  in  use  a  dozen  years ;  the  rose- 
wood is  "nicked;"  the  sienite  marble  is  stained  with  all  the 
colors  not  belonging  to  it ;  the  costliest  velvets  and  tapestries 
are  irremediably  greased ;  while  the  walls  are  scratched  and 
match-marked  in  every  possible  direction. 

It  cannot  be  a  just  matter  of  surprise,  that  a  man  should 
"become  possessed  of  an  evil  spirit,  when  he  finds  that  as  often 
as  he  presents  his  wife  with  a  charming  hat,  with  a  splendid 
silk,  with  a  magnificent  set  of  furs,  he  is  doomed  in  less  than 
a  week  to  find  the  "  love  of  a  bonnet  "  lying  about,  first  on  a 
bed,  next  on  a  centre-table,  next  hitched  on  to  the  hat-rack  in 
the  hall,  as  if  it  were  a  mere  "  hack,"  to  be  put  on  only  when 
it  was  like  to  rain,  or  when  going  out  to  make  "  next  door  "  a 
neighborly  visit  after  nightfall ;  or  if  the  costly  silk,  after  the 
first  wearing,  has  been  hastily  dumped  down  on  the  floor,  or 
hurriedly  crammed  into  a  drawer,  to  be  taken  out  with  a  him 
dred  thousand  unsightly  creases ;  or  if  the  diamond  breastpin 
is  broken,  or  the  bracelet-guard  lost,  or  a  diamond  is  missing 
from  the  finger-ring  after  the  first  wearing.  Not  a  less  power- 
ful means  of  bringing  up  an  evil  spirit  into  a  man,  is  the  find- 
ing his  house  all  topsy-turvy  when  he  comes  home  after  the 
business  of  the  day ;  the  children  crying,  the  servants  "  in  a 
stew,"  while  the  wife  is  in  a  humor  so  ungracious,  that  the 
moment  her  husband  enters  the  door,  she  begins  with  the  vol- 


POETRY,  MUSIC,  AND  HEALTH.  543 

ubility  of  a  dozen  ordinary  women,  to  pour  out  one  complaint 
after  another,  about  every  servant  and  every  child ;  about  the 
butcher,  and  the  baker,  and  the  milkman,  ending  with  an*  inti- 
mation of  a  very  unmistakable  character :  "  It's  your  fault." 
And  if,  after  all  this,  the  five  o'clock  dinner  is  placed  on  the 
table  at  six,  the  potatoes  hard,  the  roast  beef  black,  the  bread 
half  dough,  the  milk  sour,  and  the  soup  dishwatery,  it  cannot 
be  surprising  if  evil  spirits  do  catch  him  up  and  whisk  him  off 
to  the  village  tavern,  the  grog-shop,  the  billiard-saloon,  or  the 
gaming-table,  returning  home  later  and  later,  until,  after  a 
while,  he  habitually  enters  his  house  in  the  small  hours  of  the 
morning,  beastly  drunk,  and  with  oaths,  and  curses,  and  savage 
blows,  sometimes  enforces  those  attentions  to  his  more  beastly 
wishes  which  the  self-punished  wife  had  not  wit  enough  before 
to  see  the  wisdom  of  giving  voluntarily.  It  is  too  late,  then, 
for  any  human  music  to  charm  such  a  man,  or  to  tame  and  lay 
the  evil  spirit  within  him. 

These  things  being  so,  it  might  be  well,  for  city  mothers  es- 
pecially, to  have  their  daughters  take  fewer  lessons  in  music, 
fewer  in  French,  fewer  in  crochet-work,  and  more  in  common 
sense ;  more  in  domestic  duties,  such  as  sewing,  knitting, 
patching,  darning,  dusting  rooms,  making  beds,  taking  care  of 
their  own  clothing  and  that  of  the  smaller  children ;  helping 
the  mother  in  all  possible  ways,  —  thinking  for  her,  planning 
for  her,  anticipating  her  wants,  and  desires,  and  directions ; 
doing  all  these  things  not  merely  as  a  duty,  but  as  a  pleasure ; 
doing  them  promptly,  cheerfully,  and  lovingly,  at  all  times,  and 
under  all  circumstances ;  feeling  the  while  that  the  child 
should  be  the  servant,  and  the  mother  the  served.  No  one 
can  doubt  that  a  daughter  thus  brought  up,  with  frequent 
opportunities  of  trying  her  hand  at  making  cake,  baking  a 
loaf,  roasting  a  joint,  boiling  a  potato,  drawing  a  cup  of  tea, 
spreading  a  table,  getting  up  a  party,  fitting  her  own  dress, 
trimming  her  own  bonnet,  and  being  her  own  seamstress, 
would  have  a  power  over  a  man,  all-controlling,  in  subduing 
his  passions,  in  chastening  his  extravagances,  and  moulding 
his  nature  into  a  form,  the  very  embodiment  of  all  that  is  noble, 
manly,  generous,  and  loving. 

The  music,  then,  which  the  wife  should  practise,  in  order  to 
have  a  healthful  influence  over  the  physical,  moral,  and  mental 


544  POETRY,  MUSIC,  AND  HEALTH. 

nature  of  a  man,  —  restraining  him  from  vice,  and  crime,  and 
gluttony,  and  late  hours,  and  drunkenness,  —  and  the  poetry 
which  she  should  recite  to  him  every  day  are  the  music  and 
poetry  of  a  tidy  home,  of  cleanly  and  well-behaved  children,  of 
quiet  and  respectful  servants,  of  a  table  spread  so  invitingly, 
that  if  only  bread,  and  milk,  and  butter  were  there,  they  would 
taste  like  nectar  and  honey  just  from  the  hive ;  while  the  all- 
pervading  and  happy  influence  of  a  quiet,  loving,  and  lady-like 
wife,  sanctifies  the  whole  household,  and  makes  it  a  commu- 
nity of  love,  of  enjoyment,  of  domestic  beatitude. 

There  must  be  music,  and  poetry  too,  in  the  husband ;  he 
must  strive  daily  to  deport  himself  towards  the  woman  who 
has  borne  him  children,  with  a  like  respect,  and  deference,  and 
consideration,  and  gentleness,  to  that  which  he  was  accustomed 
to  exhibit  shortly  before  the  marriage  ceremony  had  made 
them  one.  We  say  "strive,"  for  many  a  time  it  will  require 
an  effort,  a  moral  power  akin  to  the  heroic  ;  for  there  is  much 
in  the  life  of  almost  every  man  of  business,  so  wearying,  de- 
pressing, and  often  harrowing  to  the  whole  nature,  that  he 
would  be  more  than  mortal,  if,  under  their  influences,  when  the- 
physical  nature  is  tired  with  labor,  he  could  exhibit  the  beau- 
tiful amenities  of  an  elevated  domesticity,  without  some  sum- 
moning up  to  his  aid  all  the  latent  power  within  him,  to  recall 
the  feelings,  and  affections,  and  deportment  of  the  happy  days 
of  courtship.  He  may  sometimes  have  to  contend  with 
woman's  waywardness,  only  exhibited,  it  may  be,  when  under 
the  influence  of  sickness,  or  inward  grief,  or  deep  disappoint- 
ment, or  bitter  mortification,  or  of  a  hard  lot  in  life  ;  but  surely 
it  will  be  the  more  manly  part,  under  such  circumstances,  to 
shut  his  eye,  and  ear,  and  sense  to  many  things,  covering 
them  with  that  mantle  of  charity  which  he  should  always  have 
at  hand,  for  her  sake,  who  left  father,  and  mother,  and  all  the 
dear  associations  of  home  and  kindred,  and  threw  herself  so 
trustingly  on  his  protection,  his  love,  his  honor,  and  his  care. 
Let  the  daughter  also  practice,  for  her  who  bore  her.  that 
sweetest  of  all  music  to  an  aged  mother's  heart,  to  wit,  a 
prompt,  a  cheerful,  an  unhesitating  obedience  to  all  her  known 
wishes;  let  her  feel  abidingly,  that  nothing  she  can  do  for  the 
mother  who  loved  her,  and  watched  over  her  with  so  much 
tenderness  and  solicitude,  and  anxious  care,  through  the  run- 


POETRY.  MUSIC,  AND  HEALTH.  545 

ning  years  of  infancy,  and  childhood,  and  mature  age,  can  ever 
half  repay  her;  let  that  mother's  peace,  and  comfort,  and 
repose,  and  quiet  happiness,  be  the  constant  study  and  the 
steady  aim  of  every  dutiful  daughter  ;  for,  however  much  she 
may  do,  it  would  not  be  considered  half  enough,  when  that 
mother  has  passed  into  the  grave.  Yes,  however  much  she 
may  have  done,  it  will  then  be  felt  the  strangest  thing  in  the 
world  that  she  had  not  done  more  ;  she  will  constantly  re- 
proach herself  for  want  of  consideration  in  a  thousand  little 
things,  each  one  of  which  might  have  been  a  rill  of  pleasure  to 
the  aged  heart  as  it  was  nearing  its  final  resting-place. 

Let  the  dutiful  and  loving  daughter  practise  that  other 
music-lesson  for  her  mother's  sake,  —  the  willingness  to  learn  ; 
to  practise  it  so  diligently,  that  there  need  never  be  a  repeti- 
tion of  a  mother's  counsel,  or  direction,  or  advice.  Said  a 
mother  to  me  once,  K I  never  recollect  the  time  when  I  found 
it  necessary  to  repeat  a  wish  to  any  child  of  mine ;  I  have  only 
to  half  tell  it,  when  it  is  done."  Happy  mother !  dear  loving 
children !  How  I  wish  there  were  more  such  !  I  know  there 
.are  too  many  daughters  who  are  directly  the  reverse ;  who 
seem  to  think  that  a  mother's  advice  is  out  of  date,  her  coun- 
sel old-fogyish,  and  all  her  pains  to  show  her  how  to  do  things, 
are  not  only  disregarded,  but  are  listened  to  or  witnessed  with 
the  utmost  impatience,  as  evidenced  by  the  surly  look,  the 
unsightly  frown,  or  some  disrespectful  exclamation.  Poor 
child !  every  one  of  these  will  be  a  dagger  to  your  heart,  the 
more  painful  as  you  grow  older ;  striking  deeper  and  deeper 
as  years  roll  on,  causing  many  an  hour  of  sadness  by  day,  and 
of  remorse,  O,  how  grinding !  in  the  sleepless  hours  of  mid- 
night, so  many  of  which  are  the  lot  of  old  age. 

The  things  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  are  moral  music 
and  moral  poetry  ;  these  promote  the  health  of  the  heart ;  but 
there  are  pieces  of  real,  tangible  poetry,  the  repetition,  or  the 
reading  of  which  aloud,  at  times,  when  the  mind  is  in  the  mel- 
low mood,  or  when  sorrows  weigh  it  down,  or  when  grief 
presses  upon  it  like  a  crushing  millstone,  will  many  a  time 
lighten  the  load  which  burdens  poor  humanity's  heart,  and  at 
other  times  will  lift  it  up,  and  elevate,  and  waken  it  to  nobler 
purposes  and  to  higher  resolves,  instead  of  letting  life  go  out 
in  blank  despair,  or  in  the  dreadful  night  of  suicide. 


546  POETRY,  MUSIC,  AND  HEALTH. 

Poetry  and  song  have  not,  in  three  thousand  years,  lost  any 
of  their  efficiency  in  medicating  the  maladies  of  the  mind, 
which,  by  the  way,  are  sometimes  more  terrible  in  their  ill 
effects,  than  are  physical  diseases. 

Song  soothes  the  troubled  soul,  it  calms  the  perturbed 
spirit,  and  sweetly  lessens  the  weight  of  those  mournfully 
pleasing  recollections  of  the  far-distant  past  of  childhood  and 
home  ;  of  the  friends  long  since  departed,  but  still,  0,  how 
deeply,  truly,  sweetly  loved  ! 

Simple,  silent  reflection  has  a  power  to 

"  Calm  the  surges  of  the  mind," 

especially  at  eventide,  when  the  day's  work  is  done;  and  clear 
it  of  the  gross  encumbrances  which  corrupting  business  trans- 
actions have  left  behind  them,  that  it  may  be  empty,  swept, 
and  garnished,  fit  for  the  Master's  use  ;  yea,  fit  for  the  dwell- 
ing-place of  God  ! 

If  music  and  meditation  have  such  a  power  separately,  that 
power  must  be  intensified,  when  living  sentiments  are  ex- 
pressed in  searching  words,  and  glorious  thoughts  are  em- 
bodied in  words  and  music  too.  Then,  sweet  as  the  mother's 
lullaby  will  the  heavenly  influences  come  over  the  heart,  in 
repeating  to  itself,  as  the  day  gradually  dies  into  the  night,— 

"  I  love  to  steal  a  while  away 

From  every  cumbering  care; 
And  spend  the  hours  of  setting  day 
In  humble,  grateful  prayer. 

"I  love  to  think  on  mercies  past, 

And  future  good  implore ; 
And  all  my  cares  and  sorrows  cast 
On  Him  whom  I  adore." 

No  one,  we  should  think,  could  "  hum  "  those  lines  in  a  minor 
key,  without  improving  both  the  mental  and  bodily  condition. 
How  sweetly  comforting  and  love-sustaining,  what  a  moral 
"  tonic,"  acting  physically,  waking  up  the  whole  man  to  great- 
er activities,  and  with  greater  courage  to  meet  life's  labors 
and  duties,  and  toils,  is  there  found  in  a  single  verse  of  the 
immortal  Watts  !  — 

"  The  God  we  worship  now 

Will  guide  us  till  we  die; 
Will  be  our  God  while  here  below, 
And  ours  above  the  sky." 


MENTAL  BEST.  547 


MENTAL  REST. 

WHEN  a  locomotive  is  under  full  headway,  it  cannot  be  safely 
stopped  in  a  moment ;  the  stream  of  steam  must  be  gradually 
turned  in  another  direction,  and  made  to  play  on  thin  air,  or  on 
the  fly-wheel,  as  well  as  to  have  its  supply  cut  off.  So  when 
the  nervous  energy  of  the  human  system  has  been  acting  on 
the  brain,  under  a  "  full  head  "  for  an  hour  or  more,  as  in  the 
performance  of  the  most  harrowing  tragedy,  or  in  the  deliv- 
ery of  an  impassioned  address,  or  in  the  execution  of  some 
momentous  surgical  operation,  it  is  not  safe  to  arrest  instant- 
ly the  outgoing  of  that  power  through  the  brain  ;  the  fact  is, 
it  is  not  possible.  If  the  performers  just  named  were  carried 
direct  from  the  theatre  of  their  operations  to  a  prison  or  vacant 
room,  and  were  so  bound  that  bodily  motion  was  impossible, 
the  mind  would  run  in  ceaseless  circles  over  the  performances, 
would  be  vainly  striking  against  the  air,  and  sleep  would  be 
impossible,  except  as  a  result  of  sheer  exhaustion.  Even 
then  it  would  not  bring  its  natural  renovation  :  the  tragedian, 
in  spite  of  himself,  would  go  over  his  part ;  the  orator  would 
rehearse  his  sentences ;  the  advocate  would  join  together 
again  his  points  and  proofs ;  the  minister  repeat  his  weighty 
appeals  ;  and  the  surgeon  perform  again  his  terrible  opera- 
tions,—  all  in  the  mind,  vainly,  and  with  the  almost  invariable 
accompaniment,  disagreeable  and  wearing,  to  wit :  measuring 
the  effects  which  might  have  resulted  from  certain  variations 
in  their  respective  performances,  the  surgeon  would  think  that 
his  operation  might  have  been  sooner  performed,  or  would  have 
had  a  more  favorable  recovery,  if  he  had  done  this,  that,  or 
the  other  thing,  which  he  had  not  done  ;  the  clergyman  will 
have  his  conscience  touched  by  the  reflection  that  if  he  had 
applied  another  text  of  Scripture,  or  presented  another  line  of 
argument,  or  had  summoned  a  deeper  feeling  of  the  heart,  his 
discourse  would  have  made  a  more  lasting  impression,  and 
might  have  eventuated  in  more  ineffaceable  convictions.  In 
one  sense  these  are  vain  thoughts  ;  they  increase  the  exhaus- 
tion attendant  on  the  previous  actual  labors,  and  are  altogeth- 
er unprofitable.  The  greatest  lady  tragedienne  of  modern 


548  MENTAL  REST. 

times,  Rachel,  after  an  exciting  performance,  would  go  home, 
and  although  past  midnight,  would  sometimes  spend  an  hour 
or  more  in  the  physical  effort  of  moving  the  furniture  of  one 
room  into  another,  and  in  arranging  it,  as  if  it  were  to  remain 
so  for  months,  as  a  means  of  calming  the  mental  excitement,  so 
that  she  could  go  to  sleep  ;  the  philosophy  of  the  matter  was, 
that  the  nervous  energy  was  diverted  from  the  brain,  and 
compelled,  in  a  measure,  to  pass  out  of  the  system  through 
muscular  action ;  while  the  mental  exercise  necessary  was 
such  as  to  engage  a  different  portion  of  the  brain  altogether, 
allowing  those  organs  opportunity  of  quiescence,  which  had 
been  so  lately  exercised  to  an  unwonted  degree.  Our  clerical 
readers  know  it  often  happens  that  Sunday  night  is  the  worst 
night  for  sleep  in  the  week,  especially  for  those  lazy,  and  im- 
provident, and  unsystematic  unfortunates,  who  put  off  their 
preparation  for  the  Sabbath  until  the  very  last  moment,  as  it 
were,  and  hence  have  to  sit  up  late  on  Saturday  night,  and 
even  encroach  on  the  sacred  hours  of  the  Sabbath,  thus  pro- 
faning holy  time,  in  the  feeling  that  the  end  sanctifies  the 
means,  or  that  it  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  labor,  forgetting  that 
it  is  an  unnecessary  labor,  as  it  might  and  ought  to  have  been 
done  in  proper  work  days.  As  we  were  saying,  clergymen 
sometimes  cannot  get  to  sleep  for  hours  after  preaching  at 
night :  let  such  take  a  lesson  from  the  above  recital,  and  in- 
stead of  going  to  bed  as  soon  as  they  get  home,  let  them  per- 
form some  muscular  movements,  with  the  end  above-named  in 
view ;  or,  if  that  be  not  practicable  at  times,  they  should  di- 
vert the  current  of  nervous  energy  from  the  organs  of  the 
brain  which  have  been  unusually  exercised,  to  the  considera- 
tion of  subjects  which  will  employ  other  organs.  This  may 
very  well  be  done  by  reading  a  number  of  short  articles  on 
every  variety  of  subject,  and  by  various  authors.  This  is  very 
much  on  the  same  principle  that  one  set  of  muscles  are  rested 
by  the  exercise  of  another  set,  which  allows  them  to  be  qui- 
escent. 

There  are  times  to  all,  when  the  most  industrious  are  utter- 
ly indisposed  to  do  a  single  hand's  turn,  when  the  most  dili- 
gent readers  and  thinkers  lose  the  power  of  concentration,  and 
would  entirely  fail  to  interest  the  mind  in  reading  the  most 
exciting  history  ;  neither  can  they  go  to  sleep,  which,  indeed, 


MENTAL   REST.  549 

would  be  the  very  best  thing  they  could  do  ;  and  then  again, 
in  times  of  great  calamity,  or  trouble,  or  despondency,  which, 
unfortunately,  come  to  all,  sooner  or  later,  it  will  answer  an 
excellent  purpose  to  divert  the  mind  and  rest  it,  by  reading  a 
variety  of  short  articles,  which  require  no  lengthened  thought, 
no  special  mental  effort  to  take  in ;  even  in  these  cases  the 
reading  may  sometimes  be  almost  mechanical,  yet  every  now 
and  then  a  paragraph  will  be  met  with  which  will  compel  at- 
tention more  or  less  ;  sometimes  from  its  incongruity,  its  odd- 
ity, its  fun,  its  ridiculousness,  or  its  profundity.  The  striking 
sentences  which  are  met  with  in  reading  some  new  book,  and 
which  are  industriously  penned  for  the  entertainment  of  its 
readers,  aside  from  their  intrinsic  merit,  are  worth  more  than 
money,  if  used  in  the  ways  and  at  the  times  referred  to  in  this 
article. 

When  a  man  don't  feel  like  "doing  a  single  thing,"  he  is 
in  danger,  because  he  is  very  apt,  under  such  circumstances, 
to  dawdle  or  mope  about,  and  do  nothing,  —  the  very  state  of 
mind  which  the  great  adversary  delights  to  find,  and  is  sure  to 
take  advantage  of, 

"  For  Satan  finds  some  mischief  still 
For  idle  hands  to  do," 

as  the  unequalled  Isaac  Watts  has  written.  Rather  than 
allow  perfect  idleness  under  any  circumstances,  read  the  news- 
paper, with  its  short  and  varied  articles,  even  its  advertise- 
ments, or  even  an  antiquated  scrap-book,  as  a  healthful  mental 
diversion,  recreation,  and  rest,  under  the  circumstances  ad- 
verted to.  To  the  Christian  heart,  to  that  happiest  of  human 
kind,  who  can  receive  with  an  unquestioning  confidence  and 
childlike  trust  all  that  the  Bible  says,  the  Psalms  of  David  and 
the  Proverbs  of  Solomon  are  of  incalculable  value  in  this  con- 
nection ;  they  make  the  body  forget  its  weariness,  they  bring 
comfort  to  the  desponding,  cheer  to  the  broken-hearted,  cour- 
age to  the  fallen,  and  faith,  and  rest,  and  hope,  and  happiness 
to  all. 


550  HINTS  FOB   THE   TRAVELLING   SEASON. 


HINTS   FOR   THE   TRAVELLING   SEASON. 

ABOUT  the  first  of  June  many  persons  contemplate  travel- 
ling. To  do  so  with  the  largest  amount  of  comfort  and  advan- 
tage (physical,  social,  and  mental),  the  following  suggestions 
are  made :  — 

Take  one  fourth  more  money  than  your  actual  estimated 
expenses. 

Acquaint  yourself  with  the  geography  of  the  route  and 
region  of  travel. 

Have  a  good  supply  of  small  change,  and  have  no  bill  or 
piece  higher  than  ten  dollars,  that  you  may  not  take  counterfeit 
change. 

So  arrange  as  to  have  but  a  single  article  of  luggage  to  look 
after. 

Dress  substantially ;  better  to  be  too  hot  for  two  or  three 
hours  at  noon,  than  to  be  too  cool  for  the  remainder  of  the 
twenty-four. 

Arrange,  under  all  circumstances,  to  be  at  the  place  of  start- 
ing fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  before  the  time,  thus  allowing 
for  unavoidable  or  unanticipated  detention  on  the  way. 

Do  not  commence  a  day's  travel  before  breakfast,  even  if 
that  has  to  be  eaten  at  daylight.  Dinner  or  supper,  or  both, 
can  be  more  healthfully  dispensed  with,  than  a  good  warm 
breakfast. 

Put  your  purse  and  watch  in  your  vest-pocket,  and  all  under 
your  pillow,  and  you  will  not  be  likely  to  leave  either. 

The  most  secure  fastening  of  your  chamber  door  is  a 
common  bolt  on  the  inside  ;  if  there  is  none,  lock  the  door, 
turn  the  key  so  that  it  can  be  drawn  partly  out,  and  put  the 
wash-basin  under  it ;  thus,  any  attempt  to  use  a  jimmy  or 
put  in  another  key,  will  push  it  out,  and  cause  a  racket  among 
the  crockery,  which  will  be  pretty  certain  to  rouse  the  sleeper 
and  rout  the  robber. 

A  sixpenny  sandwich,  eaten  leisurely  in  the  cars,  is  better 
for  you  than  a  dollar  dinner  bolted  at  a  "  station." 

Take  with  you  a  month's  supply  of  patience,  and  always 
think  thirteen  times  before  you  reply  once  to  any  supposed 
rudeness  or  insult,  or  inattention. 


USES  OF  ICE.  551 

Do  not  suppose  yourself  specially  and  designedly  neglected, 
if  waiters  at  hotels  do  not  bring  what  you  call  for  in  double- 
quick  time  ;  nothing  so  distinctly  marks  the  well-bred  man 
as  a  quiet  waiting  on  such  occasions ;  passion  proves  the 
puppy. 

Do  not  allow  yourself  to  converse  in  a  tone  loud  enough  to 
be  heard  by  a  person  two  or  three  seats  from  you ;  it  is  the 
mark  of  a  boor  if  in  a  man,  and  of  want  of  refinement  and 
lady-like  delicacy,  if  in  a  woman.  A  gentleman  is  not  noisy ; 
ladies  are  serene. 

Comply  cheerfully  and  gracefully  with  the  customs  of  the 
conveyances  in  which  you  travel,  and  of  the  places  where  you 
stop. 

Respect  yourself  by  exhibiting  the  manners  of  a  gentleman 
and  a  lady,  if  you  wish  to  be  treated  as  such,  and  then  you 
will  receive  the  respect  of  others. 

Travel  is  a  great  leveller ;  take  the  position  which  others 
assign  you  from  your  conduct,  rather  than  from  your  pre- 
tensions. 


USES    OF    ICE. 

IN  health  no  one  ought  to  drink  ice-water,  for  it  has  oc- 
casioned fatal  inflammations  of  the  stomach  and  bowels,  and 
sometimes  sudden  death.  The  temptation  to  drink  it  is  very 
great  in  summer ;  to  use  it  at  all  with  any  safety  the  person 
should  take  but  a  single  swallow  at  a  time,  take  the  glass  from 
the  lips  for  half  a  minute,  and  then  another  swallow,  and  so 
on.  It  will  be  found  that  in  this  way  it  becomes  disagreeable 
after  a  few  mouthfuls. 

On  the  other  hand,  ice  itself  may  be  taken  as  freely  as  possi- 
ble, not  only  without  injury,  but  with  the  most  striking  ad- 
vantage in  dangerous  forms  of  disease.  If  broken  in  sizes  of 
a  pea  or  bean,  and  swallowed  as  freely  as  practicable,  without 
much  chewing  or  crushing  between  the  teeth,  it  will  often  be 
efficient  in  checking  various  kinds  of  diarrhoea,  and  has  cured 
violent  cases  of  Asiatic  cholera. 

A  kind  of  cushion  of  powdered  ice  kept  to  the  entire  scalp, 


552  MEASLES  AND   CONSUMPTION. 

has  allayed  violent  inflammations  of  the  brain,  and  arrested 
fearful  convulsions  induced  by  too  much  blood  there. 

In  croup,  water,  as  cold  as  ice  can  make  it,  applied  freely  to 
the  throat,  neck,  and  chest,  with  a  sponge  or  cloth,  very  often 
affords  an  almost  miraculous  relief ;  and  if  this  be  followed  by 
drinking  copiously  of  the  same  ice-cold  element,  the  wetted 
parts  wiped  dry,  and  the  child  be  wrapped  up  well  in  the  bed- 
clothes, it  falls  into  a  delightful  and  life-giving  slumber. 

All  inflammations,  internal  or  external,  are  promptly  subdued 
by  the  application  of  ice  or  ice-water,  because  it  is  converted 
into  steam  and  rapidly  conveys  away  the  extra  heat,  and  also 
diminishes  the  quantity  of  blood  in  the  vessels  of  the  part. 

A  piece  of  ice  laid  on  the  wrist  will  often  arrest  violent 
bleeding  of  the  nose. 

To  drink  any  ice-cold  liquid  at  meals  retards  digestion,  chills 
the  body,  and  has  been  known  to  induce  the  most  dangerous 
internal  congestions. 

Refrigerators,  constructed  on  the  plan  of  Bartlett's,  are  as 
philosophical  as  they  are  healthful,  for  the  ice  does  not  come 
in  contact  with  the  water  or  other  contents,  yet  keeps  them 
all  nearly  ice-cold. 

If  ice  is  put  in  milk  or  on  butter,  and  these  are  not  used  at 
the  time,  they  lose  their  freshness  and  become  sour  and  stale, 
for  the  essential  nature  of  both  is  changed,  when  once  frozen 
and  then  thawed. 


MEASLES   AND    CONSUMPTION. 

THIS  disease  prevails  extensively  in  cities  during  the  winter 
season,  and  will  usually  cure  itself,  if  only  protected  against 
adverse  influences.  The  older  persons  are,  the  less  likely  they 
are  to  recover  perfectly  from  this  ailment,  for  it  very  often 
leaves  some  life-long  malady  behind  it.  The  most  hopeless 
forms  of  consumptive  disease  are  often  the  result  of  ill-con- 
ducted or  badly-managed  measles.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
not  a  particle  of  any  medicine  is  needed. 

Our  first  advice  is,  always,  and  under  all  circumstances,  send 
at  once  for  an  experienced  physician.  Meanwhile  keep  the 


REGULATING   THE  BOWELS.  553 

patient  in  a  cool,  dry,  and  well-aired  room,  with  moderate 
covering,  in  a  position  where  there  will  be  no  exposure  to 
draughts  of  air.  The  thermometer  should  range  at  about  sixty- 
five  degrees  where  the  bed  stands,  which  should  be  moder- 
ately hard,  of  shucks,  straw,  or  curled  hair.  Gratify  the 
instinct  for  cold  water  and  lemonade.  It  is  safest  to  keep  the 
bed  for  several  days  after  the  rash  has  begun  to  die  away. 
The  diet  should  be  light,  and  of  an  opening,  cooling  character. 
The  main  object  of  this  article  is  to  warn  persons  that  the 
greater  danger  is  after  the  disappearance  of  the  measles.  We 
would  advise  that  for  three  weeks  after  the  patient  is  well 
enough  to  leave  his  bed,  he  should  not  go  out  of  the  house, 
nor  stand  or  sit  for  a  single  minute  near  an  open  window  or 
door,  nor  wash  any  part  of  the  person  in  cold  water  nor  warm, 
but  to  wipe  the  face  with  a  damp  cloth.  For  a  good  part  of 
this  time  the  appetite  should  not  be  wholly  gratified ;  the 
patient  should  eat  slowly  of  light  nutritious  food.  In  one 
case,  a  little  child,  almost  entirely  well  of  the  measles,  got  to 
playing  with  its  hands  in  cold  water ;  it  gradually  dwindled 
away  and  died.  All  exercise  should  be  moderate,  in  order  to 
prevent  cooling  off  too  quickly  afterwards,  and  to  save  the 
danger  of  exposure  to  draughts  of  air,  which,  by  chilling  the 
surface,  causes  chronic  diarrhoea,  if  it  falls  on  the  bowels ; 
deafness  for  life,  if  it  falls  on  the  ear ;  or  incurable  consump- 
tion, if  it  falls  on  the  lungs. 


REGULATING  THE    BOWELS. 

IT  is  best  that  the  bowels  should  act  every  morning  after 
breakfast ;  therefore,  quietly  remain  in  the  house,  and  promptly 
attend  to  the  first  inclination.  If  the  time  passes,  do  not  eat 
an  atom  until  they  do  act ;  at  least  not  until  breakfast  next 
day,  and  even  then,  do  not  take  anything  except  a  single  cup 
of  weak  coffee  or  tea,  and  some  cold  bread  and  butter,  or  dry 
toast,  or  ship-biscuit. 

Meanwhile,  arrange  to  walk  or  work  moderately,  for  an  hour 
or  two,  each  forenoon  and  afternoon,  to  the  extent  of  keeping 
up  a  moisture  on  the  skin,  drinking  as  freely  as  desired  as 


554  ATTENTION  TO   THE  FEET. 

much  cold  water  as  will  satisfy  the  thirst,  taking  special  pains, 
as  soon  as  the  exercise  is  over,  to  go  to  a  good  fire  or  very 
warm  room  in  winter,  or,  if  in  summer,  to  a  place  entirely 
sheltered  from  any  draught  of  air,  so  as  to  cool  off  very  slowly 
indeed,  and  thus  avoid  taking  cold  or  feeling  a  "  soreness  "  all 
over  next  day. 

Remember,  that  without  a  regular  daily  healthful  action  of 
the  bowels,  it  is  impossible  to  maintain  health,  or  to  regain  it 
if  lost.  The  coarser  the  food,  the  more  freely  will  the  bowels 
act,  such  as  corn  (Indian)  bread  eaten  hot;  hominy;  wheaten 
grits  ;  bread  made  from  coarse  flour,  or  M  shorts ; "  Graham 
bread  ;  boiled  turnips,  or  stirabout. 

If  the  bowels  act  oftener  than  twice  a  day,  live  for  a  short 
time  on  boiled  rice,  farina,  starch,  or  boiled  milk.  In  more 
aggravated  cases,  keep  as  quiet  as  possible  on  a  bed,  take 
nothing  but  rice,  parched  brown  like  coffee,  then  boiled  and 
eaten  in  the  usual  way ;  meanwhile  drink  nothing  whatever, 
but  eat  to  your  fullest  desire  bits  of  ice  swallowed  nearly 
whole,  or  swallow  ice-cream  before  entirely  melted  in  the 
mouth  ;  if  necessary,  wear  a  bandage  of  thick  woollen  flannel, 
a  foot  or  more  broad,  bound  tightly  around  the  abdomen ;  this 
is  especially  necessary  if  the  patient  has  to  be  on  the  feet 
much.  Ah1  locomotion  should  be  avoided  when  the  bowels  are 
thin,  watery,  or  weakening.  The  habitual  use  of  pills,  or  drops, 
or  any  kind  of  medicine  whatever,  for  the  regulation  of  the 
bowels,  is  a  sure  means  of  ultimately  undermining  the  health  ; 
in  almost  ah1  cases  laying  the  foundation  for  some  of  the  most 
distressing  of  chronic  maladies ;  hence  all  the  pains  possible 
should  be  taken  to  keep  them  regulated  by  natural  agencies, 
such  as  the  coarse  foods  and  exercises  above  named. 


ATTENTION   TO   THE   FEET. 

IT  is  utterly  impossible  to  get  well  or  keep  well,  unless  the 
feet  are  kept  dry  and  warm  all  the  time.  If  they  are  for  the 
most  part  cold,  there  is  cough  or  sore  throat,  or  hoarseness,  or 
sick  headache,  or  some  other  annoyance. 

If  cold  and  dry,  the  feet  should  be  soaked  in  hot  water  for 


ATTENTION  TO   TEE   FEET.  555 

ten  minutes  every  night,  and  when  wiped  and  dried,  rub  into 
them  well,  ten  or  fifteen  drops  of  sweet  oil ;  do  this  patiently 
with  the  hands,  rubbing  the  oil  into  the  soles  of  the  feet 
particularly. 

On  getting  up  in  the  morning,  dip  both  feet  at  once  into 
water,  as  cold  as  the  air  of  the  room,  half-ankle  deep,  for  a 
minute  in  summer,  half  a  minute  or  less  in  winter,  rubbing 
one  foot  with  the  other,  then  wipe  dry,  and  if  convenient, 
hold  them  to  the  fire,  rubbing  them  with  the  hand  until  per- 
fectly dry  and  warm  in  every  part. 

If  the  feet  are  damp  and  cold,  attend  only  to  the  morning 
washings,  but  always  at  night  remove  the  stockings,  and  hold 
the  feet  to  the  fire,  rubbing  them  with  the  hands  for  fifteen 
minutes,  and  get  immediately  into  bed. 

Under  any  circumstances,  as  often  as  the  feet  are  cold  enough 
to  attract  attention,  draw  off  the  stockings,  and  hold  them  to 
the  fire  ;  if  the  feet  are  much  inclined  to  dampness,  put  on  a 
pair  of  dry  stockings,  leaving  the  damp  ones  before  the  fire  to 
be  ready  for  another  change. 

Some  persons'  feet  are  more  comfortable,  even  in  winter,  in 
cotton,  others  in  woollen  stockings.  Each  must  be  guided  by 
his  own  feelings.  Sometimes  two  pairs  of  thin  stockings  keep 
the  feet  warmer  than  one  pair  which  is  thicker  than  both. 
The  thin  pair  may  be  of  the  same  or  of  different  materials,  and 
that  which  is  best  next  the  foot,  should  be  determined  by  the 
feelings  of  the  person. 

Sometimes  the  feet  are  rendered  more  comfortable  by  bask 
ing  half  an  inch  thickness  of  curled  hair  on  a  piece  of  thick 
cloth,  slipping  this  into  the  stocking,  with  the  hair  next  the 
skin,  to  be  removed  at  night,  and  placed  before  the  fire  to  be 
perfectly  dried  by  morning. 

Persons  who  walk  a  great  deal  during  the  day,  should,  on 
coming  home  for  the  night,  remove  their  shoes  and  stockings, 
hold  the  feet  to  the  fire  until  perfectly  dry  ;  put  on  a  dry  pair, 
and  wear  slippers  for  the  remainder  of  the  evening. 

Boots  and  gaiters  keep  the  feet  damp,  cold  and  unclean,  by 
preventing  the  escape  of  that  insensible  perspiration  which  is 
always  escaping  from  a  healthy  foot,  and  condensing  it ;  hence 
the  old-fashioned  low  shoe  is  best  for  health. 


556  DYSPEPSIA. 


DYSPEPSIA. 

DYSPEPSIA  is  the  inability  of  the  stomach  to  prepare  from 
the  food  eaten  the  nourishment  requisite  to  sustain  the  body, 
and  to  supply  it  with  pure  blood,  which,  in  its  impure,  un- 
natural condition,  is  sent  to  every  fibre  of  the  system  ;  hence 
there  is  not  a  square  inch  of  the  body  which  is  not  liable  to  be 
affected  with  uneasiness  or  actual  pain,  and  that  portion  will 
suffer  most  which  has  been  previously  weakened,  or  diseased, 
or  injured  in  any  way.  Hence,  among  a  dozen  dyspeptics,  no 
two  will  have  the  same  predominant  symptoms,  either  in  nature 
or  locality;  and  as  these  persons  differ  further  in  age,  sex, 
temperament,  constitution,  occupation,  and  habits  of  mind  and 
body,  it  is  the  height  of  absurdity  to  treat  any  two  dyspeptics 
precisely  alike  ;  hence  the  failure  to  cure  in  many  curable 
cases. 

Dyspeptics  of  high  mental  power,  and  of  a  bilious  tempera- 
ment, are  subject  to  sick-headache  ;  those  who  are  fat  and 
phlegmatic  have  constipation  and  cold  feet ;  while  the  thin 
and  nervous  have  horrible  neuralgias,  which  make  of  life  a 
continued  martyrdom,  or  they  are  abandoned  to  forebodings  so 
gloomy,  and  even  fearful,  sometimes,  as  to  eat  out  all  the  joy 
of  life,  and  make  death  a  longed-for  event.  Some  dyspeptics 
are  wonderfully  forgetful ;  others  have  such  an  irritability  of 
temper  as  to  render  companionship  with  them,  even  for  a  few 
hours,  painful,  while  there  is  such  a  remarkable  incapacity  of 
mental  concentration,  of  fixedness  of  purpose,  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  secure  any  connected  effort  for  recovery. 

There  are  some  general  principles  of  cure  applicable  to  all, 
and  which  will  seldom  fail  of  high  advantages. 

1.  The  entire  body  should  be  washed  once  a  week  with 
soap,  hot  water,  and  a  stiff  brush. 

2.  Wear  woollen  next  the  skin  the  year  round,  during  the 
daytime  only. 

3.  By  means  of  ripe  fruits  and  berries,  coarse  bread,  and 
other  coarse  food,  keep  the  bowels  acting  freely  once  in  every 
twenty-four  hours. 

4.  Under  all  circumstances,  keep  the  feet  always  clean,  dry, 
and  warm. 


SOUR  STOMACH.  557 

5.  It  is  most  indispensable  to  have  the  fullest  plenty  of 
sound,  regular,  connected,  and  refreshing  sleep,  in  a  clean, 
light,  well-aired  chamber,  with  windows  facing  the  sun. 

6.  Spend  two  or  three  hours  of  every  forenoon,  and  one  or 
two  of  every  afternoon,  rain  or  shine,  in  the  open  air,  in  some 
form  of  interesting,  exhilarating,  and  unwearying  exercise ; 
walking,  with  a  cheering  and  entertaining  companion,  is  the 
very  best. 

7.  Eat  at  regular  times,  and  always  slowly. 

8.  That  food  is  best  for  each  which  is  most  relished,  and  is 
followed  by  the  least  discomfort.     What  may  have  benefited  or 
injured  one,  is  no  rule  for  another.     This  eighth  item  is  of  uni- 
versal application. 

9.  Take  but  a  teacupful  of  any  kind  of  drink  at  one  meal, 
and  let  that  be  hot. 

10.  Confine  yourself  to  coarse  bread  of  corn,  rye,  or  wheat ; 
to  ripe,  fresh,  perfect  fruits  and  berries,  in  their  natural  state ; 
and  to  fresh  lean  meats,  broiled  or  roasted,  as  meat  is  easier 
of  digestion  than  vegetables.     Milk,  gravies,  pastries,  heavy 
hot  bread,  farinas,  starches,  and  greasy  food  in  general,  ag- 
gravate dyspepsia  by  their  constipating  tendencies. 

11.  It  is  better  to  eat  at  regular  times  as  often  as  hungry, 
but  so  little  at  once,  as  to  occasion  no  discomfort  whatever. 

12.  Constantly  aim  to  divert  the  mind  from  the  bodily  con- 
dition, in  pleasant  ways ;  this  is  half  the  cure  in  many  cases. 


SOUR  STOMACH. 

NATURE  provides  a  liquid  (the  gastric  juice)  in  the  stomach, 
sufficient  to  dissolve  as  much  food  as  the  system  requires,  and 
no  more.  Whatever  is  eaten  beyond  what  is  needed  has  no 
gastric  juice  to  dissolve  it ;  and  being  kept  at  the  temperature 
of  the  stomach,  which  is  about  a  hundred  degrees,  it  begins  to 
decompose  —  that  is,  to  sour  —  in  one,  two,  three,  or  more 
hours,  just  as  new  cider  begins  to  sour  in  a  few  hours.  In  the 
process  of  souring,  gas  is  generated ;  as  in  the  cider-barrel,  the 
bung  is  thrown  out,  and  some  of  the  contents  run  over  at  the 
bung-hole,  because  in  souring  the  contents  expand,  and  require 


558  PRECAUTIONS. 

more  room.  So  with  the  stomach.  It  may  be  but  partially 
filled  by  a  meal ;  but  if  more  has  been  swallowed  than  wise 
nature  has  provided  gastric  juice  for,  it  begins  to  sour,  to  fer- 
ment, to  distend,  and  the  man  feels  uncomfortably  full.  He 
wants  to  belch.  That  gives  some  relief.  But  the  fermentation 
going  on,  he  gets  the  "  belly-ache  "  of  childhood,  or  some  other 
discomfort,  which  lasts  for  several  hours,  when.nature  succeeds 
in  getting  rid  of  the  surplus,  and  the  machinery  runs  smoothly 
again.  But  if  these  things  are  frequently  repeated,  the  ma- 
chinery fails  to  rectify  itself,  loses  the  power  of  readjustment, 
works  with  a  clog,  and  the  man  is  a  miserable  dyspeptic  for 
the  remainder  of  life  ;  and  all  from  his  not  having  had  wit 
enough  to  know  when  he  had  eaten  a  plenty,  and  being  foolish 
enough,  when  he  had  felt  the  ill  effects  of  thus  eating  too  much, 
to  repeat  the  process  an  indefinite  number  of  times ;  and  all  for 
the  trifling  object  of  feeling  good  for  the  brief  period  of  its 
passing  down  the  throat.  For  each  minute  of  that  good  he 
pays  the  penalty  of  a  month  of  such  suffering  as  only  a  dyspep- 
tic can  appreciate. 


PRECAUTIONS. 

1.  NEVER  sleep  in  a  room  where  there  is  any  green  paper  on 
the  walls,  as  this  color  is  made  of  arsenic  or  lead ;  the  former 
is  -by  far  the  most  dangerous,  being  Scheele's  green,  and  is 
known  positively  by  a  drop  of  muriatic  acid  on  the  green 
leaving  it  white. 

2.  White  glazed  visiting-cards  contain  sugar  of  lead,  and 
will  poison  a  child  who  is  tempted  to  chew  them  from  the 
slight  sweetish  taste. 

3.  Green  glazed  cards,  used  for  concert-tickets,  are  still  more 
poisonous ;  a  single  one  of  them  contains  a  grain  and  a  half  of 
arsenic,  enough  to  kill  a  child. 

4.  Never  put  a  pin  in  the  mouth  or  between  the  teeth,  for  ;t 
single  instant,  because  a  sudden  effort  to  laugh  or  speak  may 
convey  it  into  the  throat,  or  lungs,  or  stomach,  causing  death 
in  a  few  minutes,  or  requiring  the  windpipe  to  be  cut  open  to 
get  it  out ;  if  it  has  passed  into  the  stomach,  it  may,  as  it  has 


PRECAUTIONS.  559 

done,  cause  years  of  suffering,  ceasing  only  when  it  has  made 
its  way  out  of  the  body  through  the  walls  of  the  abdomen  or 
other  portion  of  the  system. 

5.  It  is  best  to  have  no  button  or  string  about  any  garment 
worn  during  the  night.  A  long,  loose  night-gown  is  the  best 
thing  to  sleep  in.  Many  a  man  has  facilitated  an  attack  of 
apoplexy  by  buttoning  his  shirt-collar. 

*  6.  If  you  wake  up  of  a  cold  night,  and  find  yourself  very 
restless,  get  out  of  bed,  and  standing  on  a  piece  of  carpet  or 
cloth  of  any  kind,  spend  five  or  ten  minutes  in  rubbing  the 
whole  body  vigorously  and  rapidly  with  the  hands,  having 
previously  thrown  the  bed-clothing  towards  the  foot  of  the  bed 
so  as  to  air  both  bed  and  body. 

7.  If  you  find  that  you  have  inadvertently  eaten  too  much, 
instead  of  taking  something  to  settle  the  stomach,  thus  adding 
to  the  load  under  which  it  already  labors,  take  a  continuous 
walk,  with  just   enough   activity  to  keep  up   a  very  slight 
moisture  or  perspiration  on  the  skin,  and  do  not  stop  until 
entirely  relieved,  but  end  your  exercise  in  a  warm  room,  so  as 
to  cool  off  very  slowly. 

8.  Never  put  on  a  pair  of  new  boots  or  shoes  on  a  journey, 
especially  on  a  visit  to  the  city ;  rather  wear   your  easiest, 
oldest  pair,  otherwise  you  will  soon  be  painfully  disabled. 

9.  A  loosely-fitting  boot  or  shoe,  while  travelling  in  winter, 
will  keep  the  feet  warmer,  without  any  stockings  at  all,  than  a 
tight  pair  over  the  thickest,  warmest  hose. 

10.  Riding  against  a  cold  wind,  immediately  after  singing  or 
speaking  in  public,  is  suicide. 

11.  Many  public  speakers  have  been  disabled  for  life  by 
speaking  under  a  hoarseness  of  voice. 

12.  If  you  happen  to  get  wet  in  cold  weather,  keep  moving 
on  foot  with  a  rapidity  sufficient  to  keep  off  a  feeling  of  chilli- 
ness until  you  get  into  a  house,  and  not  waiting  to  undress, 
drink  instantly  and  plentifully  of  hot  tea  of  some  sort ;  then 
undress,  wipe  dry  quickly,  and  put  on  warm,  dry  clothing. 

13.  Never  go  to  bed  with  cold  feet,  if  you  want  to  sleep 
well. 

14.  If  a  person  faints,  place  him  instantly  flat  on  a  bed,  or 
floor,  or  earth,  on  his  back,  and  quietly  let  him  alone  at  least 
for  ten  minutes  ;  if  it  is  simply  a  fainting-fit,  the  blood,  flowing 


560  HEALTHFUL   OBSERVANCES. 

on  a  level,  will  more  speedily  equalize  itself  throughout  the 
system ;  cold  water  dashed  in  the  face,  or  a  sitting  position, 
are  unnecessary  and  pernicious. 

15.  Never  blow  your  nose,  nor  spit  the  product  of  a  cough, 
nor  throw  a  fruit  peel,  on  the  sidewalk. 


HEALTHFUL   OBSERVANCES. 

1.  To  eat  when  you  do  not  feel  like  it,  is  brutal;  nay,  this 
is  a  slander  on  the  lower  animals,  they  do  not  so  debase  them- 
selves. 

2.  Do  not  enter  a  sick-chamber  on  an  empty  stomach ;  nor 
remain  as  a  watcher  or  nurse  until  you  feel  almost  exhausted  ; 
nor  sit  between  the  patient  and  the  fire  ;  nor  in  the  direction 
of  a  current  of  air  from  the  patient  towards  yourself;  nor  eat 
or  drink  anything  after  being  in  a  sick-room  until  you  have 
rinsed  your  mouth  thoroughly. 

3.  Do  not  sleep  in  any  garment  worn  during  the  day. 

4.  Most  grown  persons  are  unable  to  sleep  soundly  and  re- 
freshingly over  seven  hours  in  summer,  and  eight  in  winter. 
The  attempt  to  force  more  sleep  on  the  system  by  a  nap  in  the 
daytime,  or  a  "  second  nap  "  in  the  morning,  renders  the  whole 
of  the  sleep  disturbed  and  imperfect. 

5.  Some  of  the  most  painful  "  stomach-aches  "  are  occasioned 
by  indigestion ;  this  generates  wind,  and  hence  distention.    It 
is  often  promptly  remedied  by  kneading  the  abdomen  with  the 
ball  of  the  hand,  skin  to  skin,  from  one  side  to  another,  from 
the  lower  edge  of  the  ribs  downwards,  because  the  accumulated 
air  is  forced  on  and  outwards  along  the  alimentary  canal. 

6.  When  you  return  to  your  house  from  a  long  walk  or  other 
exhaustive  exercise,  go  to  the  fire  or  warm  room,  and  do  not 
remove  a  single  article  of  clothing  until  you  have  taken  a  cup 
or  more  of  some  kind  of  hot  drink. 

7.  In  going  into  a  colder  atmosphere,  keep  the  mouth  closed, 
and  walk  with  a  rapidity  sufficient  to  keep  off  a  feeling  of 
chilliness. 

8.  Two  pairs  of  thin  stockings  will  keep  the  feet  warmer 
than  one  pair  of  a  greater  thickness  than  both. 


SICK  HEADACHE.  561 

9.  The  "  night-sweats  "  of  disease  come  on  towards  daylight; 
their  deathly  clamminess  and  coldness  is  greatly  modified  by 
sleeping  in  a  single,  loose,  long  woollen  shirt. 

10.  The  man  or  woman  who  drinks  a  cup  of  strong  tea  or 
coffee,  or  other  stimulant,  in  order  to  aid  in  the  better  per- 
formance of  any  work  or  duty,  public  or  private,  is  foolish, 
because  it  is  to  the  body  and  brain  an  expenditure  of  what  is 
not  yet  got ;  it  is  using  power  in  advance,  and  this  can  never 
be  done,  even  once,  with  impunity. 

11.  The  less  a  man  drinks  of  anything  in  hot  weather  the 
better,  for  the  more  we  drink  the  more  we  want  to  drink,  until 
even  ice-water  palls  and  becomes  of  a  metallic  taste ;  hence 
the  longer  you  can  put  off  drinking  cold  water  on  the  morning 
of  a  hot  day,  the  better  will  you  feel  at  night. 

12.  Drinking  largely  at  meals,  even  of  cold  water  or  simple 
teas,  is  a  mere  habit,  and  is  always  hurtful.     No  one  should 
drink  at  any  one  meal  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  pint  of  any 
liquid,  even  of  cold  water,  for  it  always  retards,  impairs,  and 
interferes  with  a  healthful  digestion. 

13.  If  you  sleep  at  all  in  the  daytime,  it  will  interfere  with 
the  soundness  of  your  sleep  at  nigtat ;  much  less,  if  the  nap  be 
taken  in  the  forenoon. 

14.  A  short  nap  in  the  daytime  may  be  necessary  to  some.. 
Let  it  not  exceed  ten  minutes ;  to  this  end  sleep  with  the  fore- 
head resting  on  a  chair-back  or  edge  of  the  table. 

15.  Never  swallow  an  atom  of  food  while  in  a  passion,  or  if 
under  any  great  mental  excitement,  whether  of  a  depressing 
or  elevating  character ;  brutes  won't  do  it. 


SICK    HEADACHE. 

SICK  headache  is  sickness  at  stomach,  a  tendency  to  vomit, 
combined  with  pain  in  some  part  of  the  head,  generally  the 
left  side.  It  is  caused  by  there  being  too  much  bile  in  the 
system,  from  the  fact  that  this  bile  is  manufactured  too  rapidly, 
or  is  not  worked  out  of  the  system  fast  enough  by  steady, 
active  exercise.  Hence,  sedentary  persons,  those  who  do  not 
walk  about  a  great  deal,  but  are  seated  in  the  house  nearly  all 


562  SICK  HEADACHE. 

the  time,  are  almost  exclusively  the  victims  of  this  distressing 
malady.  It  usually  begins  soon  after  waking  up  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  lasts  a  day  or  two,  or  more.  There  are  many  causes ; 
the  most  frequent  is,  derangement  of  the  stomach  by  late  and 
hearty  suppers  ;  by  eating  too  soon  after  a  regular  meal  (five 
hours  should,  at  least,  intervene) ;  eating  without  an  appetite  ; 
forcing  food ;  eating  after  one  is  conscious  of  having  had 
enough ;  eating  too  much  of  any  favorite  dish ;  eating  some- 
thing which  the  stomach  cannot  digest;  or  sour  stomach. 
Any  of  these  things  may  induce  sick  headache ;  all  of  them 
can  be  avoided.  Over-fatigue,  or  great  mental  emotion  of  any 
kind,  or  severe  mental  application,  have  brought  on  sick 
headache,  of  the  most  distressing  character,  in  an  hour ;  it  is 
caused  by  indulgence  in  spirituous  liquors.  When  a  person 
has  sick  headache,  there  is  no  appetite  ;  the  very  sight  of  food 
is  hateful ;  the  tongue  is  furred  ;  the  feet  and  hands  are  cold, 
and  there  is  a  feeling  of  universal  discomfort,  with  an  utter 
indisposition  to  do  anything  whatever.  A  glass  of  warm 
water,  into  which  has  been  rapidly  stirred  a  heaping  teaspoon 
each  of  salt  and  kitchen  mustard,  by  causing  instantaneous 
vomiting,  empties  the  stomach  of  the  bile  or  undigested  sour 
food,  and  a  grateful  relief  is  often  experienced  on  the  spot ; 
and  rest,  with  a  few  hours  of  sound,  refreshing  sleep,  com- 
pletes the  cure,  especially  if  the  principal  part  of  the  next 
day  or  two  is  spent  in  mental  diversion  and  out-door  activities, 
not  eating  an  atom  of  food  (but  drinking  freely  of  cold  water 
or  hot  teas),  until  you  feel  as  if  a  piece  of  plain,  cold  bread 
and  butter  would  "  taste  really  good."  Nine  times  in  ten  the 
cause  of  sick  headache  is  •  in  the  fact,  that  the  stomach  was 
not  able  to  digest  the  food  last  introduced  into  it,  either  from 
its  having  been  unsuitable,  or  excessive  in  quantity.  When 
the  stomach  is  weak,  a  spoonful  of  the  mildest,  blandest  food 
would  cause  an  attack  of  sick  headache,  when  ten  times  the 
amount  might  have  been  taken  in  health,  not  only  with  impu- 
nity, but  with  positive  advantage. 

Those  who  are  "  subject  to  sick  headache "  eat  too  much 
and  exercise  too  little,  and  have  cold  feet  and  constipation. 
A  diet  of  cold  bread  and  butter,  and  ripe  fruits  or  berries, 
with  moderate  continuous  exercise  in  the  open  air,  sufficient 
to  keep  up  a  very  gentle  perspiration,  would,  of  themselves, 


PREMONITIONS.  563 

cure  almost  every  case  within  thirty-six  hours.  Two  tea- 
spoonfuls  of  pulverized  charcoal,  stirred  in  half  a  glass  of 
water,  and  drank,  generally  gives  instant  relief. 


PREMONITIONS. 

AN  incalculable  amount  of  sickness,  suffering,  and  premature 
death  would  be  avoided  every  year,  if  we  could  be  induced  to 
heed  the  warnings,  the  premonitions,  which  kindly  nature 
gives  of  the  coming  on  of  the  great  enemy  —  disease.  Many 
a  mother,  especially,  has  lost  a  darling  child,  to  her  life-long 
sorrow,  by  failing  to  observe  the  approach  of  disease,  in  some 
unusual  act  or  circumstance  connected  with  her  offspring. 

1.  If  an  adult  or  child  wakes  up  thirsty  in  the  morning, 
however  apparently  well  at  the  moment,  or  the   preceding 
evening,  there  will  be  illness  before  noon  always,  infallibly. 
It  is  generally  averted  by  remaining  warm  in  bed,  in  a  cool, 
well-ventilated  room,  eating  nothing,  but  drinking  plentifully 
of  some  hot  tea  all  day ;  some  little  may  be  eaten  in  the  after- 
noon by  a  child.     But  as  long  as  a  person  wakes  with  thirst  in 
the  morning,  there  is  an  absence  of  health  —  there  is  fever. 

2.  If,  when  not  habitual  to  him,  one  is  waked  up  early  in  the 
morning  by  an  inclination  to  stool,  especially  if  there  is  a 
feeling  of  debility  afterwards,  it  is  the  premonition  of  diar- 
rhoea, summer  complaint,  dysentery,  or  cholera.     There  should 
be  perfect  quietude,  etc.,  as  above ;  in  addition,  a  piece  of 
warm,  thick,  woollen  flannel  should  be  wrapped  tightly  around 
the  abdomen  (belly) ;  the  drink  should  be  boiled  milk ;  or  far 
better,  eat  pieces  of  ice  all  the  time,  and  thus  keep  the  thirst 
perfectly  subdued;    eat  nothing  but  boiled  rice,  corn-starch, 
sago,  or  tapioca,  and  continue  all  these  until  the  tiredness  and 
thirst  are  gone,  the  strength  returned,  and  the  bowels  have 
been  quiet  for  twelve  hours,  returning  slowly  to  the  usual  ac- 
tivities and  diet. 

3.  If  a  child  is  silent,  or  hangs  around  its  mother  to  lay  its 
head  on  her  lap,  or  is  most  unusually  fretful,  or  takes  no  in- 
terest in  its  former  amusements,  except  for  a  fitful  moment  at 
a  time,  it  is  certainly  sick,  and  not  slightly  so.     Send  at  once 


564  PREMONITIONS. 

for  a  physician,  for  you  can't  tell  where  or  in  what  form  the 
malady  will  break  out;  and  in  children  especially,  you  can 
never  tell  where  any  particular  ailment  will  end. 

4.  When  there  is  little  or  no  appetite  for  breakfast,  the  con- 
trary having  been  the  case,  the  child  is  sick,  and  should  be 
put  to  bed,  drinking  nothing  but  warm  teas,  eating  not  an 
atom  until  noon  ;  then  act  according  to  developments. 

5.  If  a  child  manifests  a  most  unusual  heartiness  for  supper, 
for  several  nights  in  succession,  it  will  certainly  be  sick  within 
a  week,  unless  controlled. 

6.  If  there  is  an  instantaneous  sensation  of  sickness  at  the 
stomach  during  a  meal,  eat  not  a  particle  more  ;  if  just  before 
a  meal,  omit  it ;  if  after  a  meal,  go  out  of  doors,  and  keep  out 
in  active  exercise  for  several  hours,  and  omit  the  next  meal, 
for  all  these  things  indicate  an  excess  of  blood  or  bile,  and  ex- 
ercise should  be  taken  to  work  it  off,  and  abstinence  to  cut 
off  an  additional  supply,  until  the  healthful  equilibrium   is 
restored. 

7.  A  kind  of  glimmer  before  the  eyes,  making  reading  or 
sewing  an  effort,  however  well  you  may  feel,  will  certainly  be 
followed  by  headache  or  other  discomfort,  for  there  is  too 
much  blood,  or  it  is  impure ;  exercise  it  off  in  the  open  air. 
and  omit  a  meal  or  two. 

8.  If  you  are  not  called  to  stool  at  the  accustomed  hour 
(except  when  travelling,  then  let  things  take  care  of  them- 
selves —  do  nothing),  eat  not  an  an  atom  until  it  is  done,  for 
loss  of  appetite,  or  nausea,  or  loose  bowels,  or  biliousness,  is 
certainly  impending.     Exercise  freely  out  of  doors,  and  drink 
cold  water  or  hot  teas  to  the  fullest  desired  extent. 

9.  If  there  is  a  most  unnatural  indisposition  to  exertion, 
you  need  rest,  quiet,  and  abstinence ;  exercise  in  weariness 
never  does  any  good,  always  harm.      But  if  causelessly  de- 
spondent, or  there  is  a  general  feeling  of  discomfort,  the  blood 
is  bad  ;    warm  the  feet,  unload  the  bowels,  eat  nothing  for 
twelve  hours,  and  be  out  of  doors  all  day. 

10.  If,  without  any  known  cause,  or  special  pain,  you  are 
exceedingly  restless,  cannot  sleep,  or  if  you  do,  it  is  dreamy, 
disturbed,  or  distressing,  you  have  eaten  too  much,  or  are  on 
the  verge  of  some  illness.     Take  nothing  next  day  but  hot 
drinks  and  toasted  bread,  and  a  plenty  of  out-door  exercise. 


NEURALGIA.  565 

In  all  these  cases,  a  thorough  washing  with  soap  and  hot 
water,  and  vigorous  bodily  friction,  greatly  expedite  resto- 
ration. 


NEURALGIA. 

NEURALGIA,  from  two  Greek  words,  Neuros,  nerve,  and  Algos, 
pain,  means  nerve-pain  ;  but  as  there  is  no  pain  except  in 
connection  with  the  nerves,  every  pain  or  ache  in  the  body  is 
really  "  neuralgia."  Ailments  are  generally  named  from  the 
part  affected,  or  the  nature  of  the  malady.  "Headache," 
because  the  pain  is  in  the  head.  "Pleuritis,"  or  pleurisy, 
because  there  is  inflammation,  too  much  arterial  blood  in  the 
pleura,  or  covering  of  the  lungs.  Neuralgia  is  always  caused 
by  bad  blood ;  bad,  because  too  poor  or  too  much  of  it ;  too 
poor,  because  there  is  not  exercise  and  pure  air  enough  to 
secure  a  good  digestion,  and  the  person  is  thin  and  pale  ;  too 
much  blood,  because  there  is  too  much  eating,  and  the  bowels 
not  acting  every  day,  more  is  taken  into  the  system  than 
passes  from  it,  and  it  is  too  full.  The  person  may  be  fleshy 
enough,  and  does  not  appear  sick  at  all.  For  a  week,  live  on 
cold  bread  and  butter,  fruits,  and  cold  water.  Take  an  enema 
of  a  pint  or  more  of  tepid  water  daily,  and  spend  the  whole 
of  daylight  in  active  exercise  in  the  open  air,  and  the  neu- 
ralgia will  be  gone  in  three  cases  out  of  four  —  the  feet  being 
kept  warm,  and  the  whole  body  most  perfectly  clean.  There 
are  two  kinds  of  neuralgia,  sharp  and  dull ;  both  caused  by 
there  being  too  much  blood  in  or  about  the  nerve.  Perhaps  the 
arterial  blood  gives  the  sharp,  venous  blood  the  dull  or  heavy 
pain.  In  either  case,  the  pain  is  of  all  forms  of  intensity,  from 
simple  discomfort  to  an  agony  almost  unendurable.  In  the 
more  fleshy  parts  the  pain  is  less  severe,  since  the  soft  flesh 
yields  before  the  distending  nerve :  distended  by  more  and 
more  blood  getting  into  it,  until  it  is  occasionally  three  times 
its  usual  size ;  but  when  the  nerve  is  in  a  tooth,  or  between 
two  bones,  or  passes  through  a  small  hole  in  the  bone,  as  in 
the  face,  or  "  facial  neuralgia,"  which  is  neuralgia  proper,  or 
the  Tic  Douloureux  of  the  French,  the  suffering  is  fearful, 
because  there  is  no  room  for  distention,  and  every  instant  the 


566  ERYSIPELAS. 

heart,  by  its  beating,  plugs  more  blood  into  the  invisible  blood- 
vessels of  the  nerves.  But  in  any  such  case,  open  a  blood- 
vessel in  the  arm,  or  else  where,  until  the  person  is  on  the  very 
point  of  fainting,  and  the  most  excruciating  neuralgia  is  gone 
in  an  instant,  because  the  heart  ceases  to  send  on  blood,  and 
the  blood  already  in  a  part,  as  naturally  flows  out  of  it  as 
water  naturally  flows  out  of  an  uncorked  bottle  on  its  side. 
Hence,  a  skin  kept  clean  by  judicious  washings  and  frictions, 
helps,  by  its  open  pores,  to  unload  the  system  of  its  surplus ; 
the  bowels  kept  free  by  fruits,  berries,  coarse  bread,  and  cold 
water,  is  another  source  of  deliverance  of  excess.  While  these 
articles  of  food  supply  but  a  moderate  amount  of  nourishment, 
in  addition  active  exercise  still  more  rapidly  works  off  the  sur- 
plusage of  the  system,  and  the  man  is  well ;  not  as  soon  as  by 
the  bleeding,  but  by  a  process  more  effective,  more  certain, 
more  enduring,  and  without  harm  or  danger.  Hence,  there  is 
no  form  of  mere  neuralgia  which  is  not  safely  and  permanently 
cured  in  a  reasonable  time  by  strict  personal  cleanliness,  by 
cooling,  loosening  food,  as  named,  and  by  breathing  a  pure  air 
in  resting  in  our  chambers  at  night,  and  in  moderate  labor  out 
of  doors  during  the  hours  of  daylight.  Those  who  prefer  un- 
certain physic  or  stimulants  to  these  more  natural  remedies, 
are  unwise,  and  ought  to  have  neuralgia  —  a  little. 


ERYSIPELAS. 

FROM  the  two  Greek  words,  meaning  wto  draw"  and 
"  neighboring  \ "  from  the  nature  of  the  disease  to  draw  in  or 
involve  adjacent  parts.  The  Scotch  call  it  the  "rose,"  from 
its  color  ;  others,  St.  Anthony's  fire,  from  its  burning  heat.  It 
is  a  diffused  inflammation  or  redness  of  the  skin  of  the  face 
and  head ;  fever  precedes  the  local  inflammation,  with  sore 
throat  as  an  almost  invariable  attendant.  The  premonitory 
symptoms  are,  the  patient  feels  ill,  shivery,  feeble  or  tired, 
languid,  and  often  drowsy ;  sometimes  there  is  nausea,  vomit- 
ing, and  diarrhoea.  The  actual  attack  begins  with  a  chill ; 
then  some  part  of  the  face,  nose,  one  cheek,  or  rim  of  one  ear, 
begins  to  feel  hot,  stiff,  and  tingling,  and  on  close  examination 


ERYSIPELAS.  567 

is  found  to  be  of  a  deep,  continuous  red  color,  swollen  and 
hard  ;  this  redness  and  swelling  advances  gradually,  sometimes 
rapidly,  with  a  distinct,  elevated  margin  as  of  a  wave,  until 
the  whole  scalp  and  face  are  involved.  No  disease,  except  the 
small-pox,  so  obliterates  and  deforms  the  features ;  for  the 
cheeks  enlarge,  the  lips  thicken  enormously,  and  the  eyes  are 
completely  closed  by  the  swelling  of  the  lids ;  the  mind  begins 
to  wander,  especially  at  night ;  then  delirium,  and  in  a  few 
days  —  death!  In  cases  of  recovery,  the  redness  declines  in 
three  or  four  days,  the  swelling  subsides,  and  the  person 
gradually  gets  well.  Erysipelas  of  the  head  and  face  is  so 
generally  fatal  in  three  or  four  days,  spreads  with  such  rapidity, 
and  by  extending  to  the  throat,  which,  by  its  swelling,  closes 
up  the  passage  of  the  air  to  the  lungs,  causing  instant  death, 
that  it  is  important  to  know  the  distinguishing  symptoms  already 
enumerated,  and  to  have  some  means  at  hand  by  which  families, 
many  miles  distant  from  medical  aid,  may  do  something  towards 
arresting  its  wave-like  progress  until  the  physician  arrives. 
This  is,  of  late,  claimed  to  be  done  by  the  very  simple  process 
of  pounding  raw  cranberries,  and  covering  the  part  affected 
with  a  poultice  made  of  them.  A  more  generally  accessible 
remedy  is,  to  paint  the  whole  affected  surface,  and  a  little 
beyond,  with  common  white  paint,  laying  it  on  with  a  feather ; 
add  a  fresh  coat  every  two  hours,  until  a  thick  layer  is  ob- 
tained, and  thereafter  sufficiently  often  to  keep  the  parts 
entirely  and  perfectly  covered ;  the  object  being  to  exclude 
the  air,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  great  irritant.  This  coat- 
ing of  white-lead  paint  peels  off  in  a  week  or  ten  days  with 
the  shed  skin,  and  leaves  the  surface  beneath  clean,  smooth, 
and  healthy.  To  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  promptly  un- 
load the  bowels  by  an  injection  of  a  pint  of  lukewarm  water  ; 
eat  nothing  but  a  crust  of  cold  bread  or  toasted  bread  broken 
into  some  warm  tea,  every  four  hours  during  daylight,  and 
occupy  a  clean,  dry,  well-aired  room  and  bed.  When  the  phy- 
sician arrives,  if  you  are  not  well,  put  the  case  implicitly  and 
entirely  into  his  hands.  The  almost  universal  cause  of  ery- 
sipelas is  bad  blood,  arising,  in  nearly  every  instance,  from 
constipation  of  the  bowels  ;  that  is,  their  failure  to  act  every 
day.  This  is  generally  brought  on  by  resisting  the  calls  of 
nature ;  by  over-eating ;  by  neglect  of  exercise  in  the  open 


568  SKATING. 

air,  or  by  cooling  off  too  quickly  after  such  exercise  ;  in  such 
cases,  the  cold  is  apt  to  settle  in  the  throat,  and  prove  speedily 
fatal.  If  erysipelas  sets  in  after  a  wound,  it  is  because  of  the 
impure  state  of  the  blood  from  the  same  causes  —  the  wound, 
in  this  case,  being  merely  the  excitant,  the  spark  to  the 
powder  already  there. 


SKATING. 

SKATING  is  one  of  the  most  exhilarating  of  all  pastimes, 
whether  on  the  ice,  or  over  our  parlor  or  hall  floors  with  roller- 
skates.  In  the  days  of  "  Queen  Bess,"  some  three  hundred 
years  ago,  it  was  a  favorite  amusement  with  the  Londoners, 
whose  facilities  for  the  same  were  limited  to  pieces  of  bo.ne 
attached  to  the  shoes.  As  lives  have  been  lost  in  connection 
with  skating,  the  following  suggestions  are  made :  — 

1.  Avoid   skates  which  are  strapped  on  the  feet,  as  they 
prevent  the  circulation,  and  the  foot  becomes  frozen  before  the 
skater  is  aware  of  it,  because  the  tight  strapping  benumbs  the 
foot  and  deprives  it  of  feeling.     A  young  lady  at  Boston  lost 
a  foot  in  this  way  ;  another  in  New  York  her  life,  by  endeavor- 
ing to  thaw  her  feet  in  warm  water  after  taking  off  her  skates. 
The  safest  kind  are  those  which  receive  the  fore-part  of  the 
foot   in   a  kind  of  toe,  and   stout  leather  around   the   heel, 
buckling  in  front  of  the  ankle  only,  thus  keeping  the  heel  in 
place  without  spikes  or  screws,  and  aiding  greatly  in  support- 
ing the  ankle. 

2.  It  is  not  the  object  so  much  to  skate  fast,  as  to  skate 
gracefully;   and  this  is  sooner  and  more  easily  learned   by 
skating  with  deliberation ;  while  it  prevents  over-heating,  and 
diminishes  the  chances  of  taking  cold  by  cooling  off  too  soon 
afterwards.  . 

3.  If  the  wind  is  blowing,  a  veil  should  be  worn  over  the 
face,  at  least  of  ladies  and  children ;  otherwise,  fatal  inflam- 
mation of  the  lungs,  "  pneumonia,"  may  take  place. 

4.  Do  not  sit  down  to  rest  a  single  half-minute ;  nor  stand 
still,  if  there  is  any  wind ;  nor  stop  a  moment  after  the  skates 
are  taken  off ;  but  walk  about,  so  as  to  restore  the  circulation 
about  the  feet  and  toes,  and  to  prevent  being  chilled. 


NURSING  HINTS.  569 

5.  It  is  safer  to  walk  home  than  to  ride ;  the  latter  is  almost 
certain  to  give  a  cold. 

6.  Never  carry  anything  in  the  mouth  while  skating,  nor 
any  hard  substance  in  the  hand,  nor  throw  anything  on  the 
ice ;   none    but  a  careless,  reckless   ignoramus   would   thus 
endanger  a  fellow-skater  a  fall. 

7.  If  the  thermometer  is  below  thirty,  and  the  wind  is  blow- 
ing, no  lady  or  child  should  be  skating. 

8.  Always  keep  your  eyes  about  you,  looking  ahead  and  up- 
ward, not  on  the  ice,  that  you  may  not  run  against  some  lady, 
child,  or  learner. 

9.  Arrange  to  have  an  extra  garment,  thick  and  heavy,  to 
throw  over  your  shoulders  the  moment  you  cease  skating,  and 
then  walk  home,  or  at  least  half  a  mile,  with-  your  mouth 
closed,  so  that  the  lungs  may  not  be  quickly  chilled  by  the 
cold  air  dashing  upon  them  through  the  open  mouth;  if  it 
passes  through  the  nose  and  head,  it  is  warmed  before  it  gets 
to  the  lungs. 

10.  It  would  be  a  safe  rule  for  no  child  or  lady  to  be  on 
skates  longer  than  an  hour  at  a  time. 

11.  The  grace,  exercise,  and  healthfulness  of  skating  on 
the    ice   can    be   had,  without  any  of   its   dangers,  by   the 
use  of  skates,  with  rollers  attached,  on  common  floors  ;  better 
if  covered  with  oil-cloth. 


NURSING   HINTS. 

To  the  nurse  is  intrusted  a  holy  human  life,  and  to  fail  of 
duty  by  inattention  or  ignorance,  is  cruelly  criminal. 

1.  The  nurse  should  not  eat,  drink,  or  sleep  in  a  sick-room. 

2.  Nor  fast  longer  than  five  hours,  whether  a  day  or  night 
watcher. 

3.  Always  go  into  the  room  for  day  or  night  duty,  with  a 
full  meal. 

4.  A  strong  body  and  a  wide-awake  mind  are  equally  essen- 
tial to  a  capable  and  efficient  nurse ;  hence,  seven  hours  of 
consecutive  sleep  out  of  each  twenty-four  is  a  necessity. 

5.  Do  not  sit  between  the  bed  and  the  fire,  or  on  the  other 
side  of  the  patient  from  an  open  door  or  window. 


570  NUBSINGt  HINTS. 

6.  Clean  your  teeth,  dress  your  hair,  and  wash  your  whole 
body  well  with  soap  and  water  after  watching,  so  that  you 
may  sleep  in  clean  linen:  in  no  garment  worn  during  your 
watching. 

7.  Wear  as  few  woollen  or  dark  clothes  as  possible ;  they 
hide  dirt  and  harbor  noxious  exhalations. 

8.  Never  speak  in  a  whisper  or  undertone  in  the  sick-room, 
unless  the  patient  is  asleep ;  it  engenders  suspicions. 

9.  Avoid  all    discomposure,  flurry,   and    noise,   especially 
sudden,  harsh,  or  discordant ;  and  wear  no  creaking  shoes  or 
rustling  garments. 

10.  Maintain  at  all  times  a  countenance  which  is  at  once 
composed,  self-possessed,  cheerful,  hopeful,  kindly,  confident, 
and  sympathetic,  else  you  are  utterly  unfit  for  the  place. 

11.  As  far  as  possible,  anticipate  every  want,  without  at  the 
same  time  being  officious.     Avoid  all  unnecessary  question- 
ings, and  do  not  be  forever  fixing  things  about  the  bed. 

12.  Keep  scrupulously  out  of  sight  everything  in  the  shape 
of  druggery,  such  as  bottles,  vials,  spoons,  pill-boxes,  etc. 

13.  Do  not  allow  any  liquid  thing  to  remain  in  the  room  one 
single  moment  longer  than  it  is  in  use,  not  even  a  glass  of  ice- 
water. 

14.  Have  no  hanging  garments  in  the  sick-chamber,  and  as 
little  woollen  carpeting  and  bed-coverings  as  possible,  and  no 
bed  or  window-curtains. 

15.  Keep  the  room  in  perfect  order,  and  arrange  things  with 
an  eye  to  taste,  neatness  and  cheerfulness. 

16.  If  visitors  are  admitted,  ask  them  to  leave  the  room  the 
moment  conversation  flags.     No  patient  can  possibly  desire  to 
be  gaped  at  in  silence. 

17.  Never  allow  a  frown,  or  an  angry  word,  or  an  impatient 
expression  of  countenance,  whatever  may  be  the  provocation. 
However  "  cross "  the  patient  is,  it  is  your  business  to  be 
propitiative. 

18.  Guard  against  draughts  of  air  and  damp  bedclothes  or 
garments. 

19.  Always  have  the  fireplace  open,  and  a  window  or  door, 
as  nearly  opposite  as  possible,  a  little  raised  and  lowered,  or 
ajar.     If  there  is  no  fire,  have  a  lamp  or  candle  burning  in  the 
fireplace,  to  create  a  draught  up  the  chimney. 


INVERTED    TOE-NAIL.  571 

20.  Let  the  room  be  as  clean  and  as  sunshiny  as  possible. 

21.  If  fire  is  needed  in  the  chamber,  a  thermometer  should 
hang  about  five  feet  from  the  floor,  opposite  the  fireplace,  and 
should  range  about  sixty  degrees. 

22.  Let  all  kinds   of  impressive  intelligence  be  communi- 
cated gradually,  and  as  unimpressibly  as  possible. 

23.  Sleep  is  the  best  agency  of  recovery  in  all  nature  ; 
hence  never  wake  a  sleeping  patient,  but  promote  sleep  in  all 
possible  ways. 

24.  Do  all  you  can  to  inspire  confidence  in  the  physician ; 
never  make  a  suggestion  to  him  in  the  presence  of  the  patient, 
and  be  faithful  to  his  instructions. 


INVERTED   TOE-NAIL. 

INVERTED  toe-nail  is  excruciatingly  painful,  and  has  re- 
peatedly destroyed  life  by  mortification  or  lockjaw.  The  nail 
does  not  grow  into  the  flesh,  but  the  flesh,  being  irritated  by  a 
tight  shoe,  inflames  and  swells,  crowding  itself  up  against  the 
sharp  and  unyielding  edge  of  the  nail,  until  it  ulcerates,  when 
the  slightest  touch  is  agonizing. 

1.  The  old  remedy  was  to  drag  out  the  entire  nail  with 
pincers ;  but  even  this  was  not  always  successful,  terrible  as 
it  was. 

2.  Cut  a  notch  in  the  nail  down  to  the  quick,  along  the 
centre  of  the  arch,  from  the  root  outward,  or  scrape  it  with  a 
glass ;  this  breaks  the  arch,  and  the  pressure  at  the  sides  tends 
to  close  it  up,  and  thus  relieves,  because  the  nail  changes  its 
curvature,  and  the  outer  edges  turn  up,  instead  of  down. 

3.  Take  equal  quantities  of  blue  vitriol  (sulphate  of  copper) 
and  common  alum,  burnt ;  reduce  them  to  a  fine  powder,  mix- 
ing  them  together  most  thoroughly;    then   sift   it  through 
muslin ;    next,  wash  the  parts  well  with  Castile   soap-suds, 
and  apply  the  powder ;  repeat  this  four  times  every  twenty- 
four  hours. 

4.  Scrape  the  whole  nail  moderately  with  a  piece  of  glass, 
so  as  to  diminish  its  thickness  considerably ;  then  rub  it  all 
over  well  with  a  piece  of  solid  nitrate  of  silver,  moistened 


572  INVERTED   TOE-NAIL. 

with  a  little  water ;  then  apply  a  hot  poultice  of  linseed-meal, 
to  remain  until  next  morning,  when  the  whole  nail  will  be 
loosened,  and  may  be  removed  without  any  pain ;  if  not  en- 
tirely loosened,  make  another  but  milder  application  of  the 
caustic. 

5.  Scrape  the  toe-nail  to  the  quick  with  a  piece  of  glass,  from 
the  root  outward,  as  near  as  possible  to  the  ailing  edge ;  then, 
with  a  pair  of  pincers,  catch  hold  of  the  edge  of  the  nail"  far- 
thest from  the  sore  spot,  and  gently  draw  the  nail  away  from 
it  towards  the  centre,  and  repeat  daily. 

6.  Freeze  the  parts ;  scrape  the  nail  longitudinally  to  the 
quick,  the  eighth  of  an  inch  from  the  ailing  edge ;  then  with 
tweezers  draw  out  the  offending  part ;  this  is  done  without 
pain. 

7.  Spread  an  ointment  of  per-chloride  of  iron  on  some  lint, 
and  lay  it  over  the  excrescence  ;  renew  it  twice  daily,  and  in 
four  days  the  excrescence  becomes  dry,  is  easily  detached,  and 
in  a  week  all  is  well. 

8.  When  there  is  "  proud  flesh,"  or  ulceration,  drop  two  or 
three  drops  of  melted  tallow  between  the  nail  and  the  granu- 
lations.     One  application  usually  gives  immediate  relief,  by 
the  hot  tallow  insinuating  itself  in  every  interstice  under  the 
nail,  acting  as  a  liquid  cautery,  the  parts  drying  up  in  a  few 
days. 

9.  The  editor's  plan  is  simply  to  insinuate,  with  a  bodkin  or 
silver  teaspoon-handle,  a  small  amount  of  lint  or  cotton  between 
the  edge  of  the  nail  and  flesh,  in  the  gentlest  manner,  and  let 
it  remain  there  until  next  day,  when  more  is  to  be  insinuated, 
and  so  on,  until,  by  the  absorption  caused  by  the  pressure,  the 
swelling  or  proud  flesh  entirely  disappears.     If  this  is  done 
when  attention  is  first  directed  unpleasantly  to  the  toe,  it  gets 
well  in  a  day  or  two.     If  neglected  until  there  is  great  pain 
and  swelling,  or  ulceration,  it  is  better  to  go  to  bed  and  keep 
the  toe  poulticed  with  bread  and  milk  or  linseed-flour,  put  on 
hot  and  renewed  every  four  hours ;  then  scrape  the  nail  to  the 
quick  at  the  centre,  from  the  root  outward,  and  proceed  as 
above.     Remember  that  it  is  best,  in  trimming  both  finger  and 
toe-nails,  not  to  trim  down  to  the  corners,  but  let  the  nail 
grow  out  rather  more  square,  not  rounding  off  at  the  angle. 
It  will  hasten  the  cure,  if  the  cotton,  after  being  put  in,  is  mois- 
tened with  liquid  nitrate  of  silver,  forty  grains  to  the  ounce. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  APHORISMS.  573 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  APHORISMS. 

1.  THE  foundation  of  three  fourths  of  all  cases  of  consump- 
tion is  laid  before  the  age  of  twenty-five  years j  in  women, 
during  their  teens. 

2.  The  hereditary  element  is  not  of  special  account  as  a 
cause  of  consumption,  as  less  than  twenty-five  per  cent,  of 
cases  are  clearly  of  consumptive  parentage. 

3.  One  of  the  ruling  causes  of  disease  and  premature  death, 
in  large  cities,  is  found  in  that  exhausting  strain  of  the  mental 
energies   in  the  struggle  for  subsistence  —  a  death-race  for 
bread. 

4.  Insanity  runs  in  families ;  but,  as  in  the  case  of  family 
likeness,  it  sometimes  overleaps  a  generation  or  more. 

5.  Personal  resemblance  entails  like  characteristics  of  mind 
and  disposition. 

6.  A  current  of  the  purest  air  from  the  poles,  for  half  an 
hour,  on  a  person  sleeping,  sitting  still,  or  overheated,  is  a 
thousand  fold  more  destructive  of  health  and  fatal  to  life  than 
the  noisomeness  of  a  crowded  room  or  vehicle,  or  the  stench 
of  a  pig-sty  for  thrice  the  time. 

7.  To  exercise  in  weariness,  increased  by  every  step,  is  not 
only  not  beneficial,  it  is  useless  and  worse  than  useless ;  it  is 
positively  destructive. 

8.  As  no  good  traveller,  after  having  fed  his  horse,  renews 
his  journey  in  a  trot,  but  with  a  slow  walk,  gradually  increas- 
ing his  pace,  so  in  getting  up  to  address  an  assembly  for  a 
continued  effort,  the  first  few  sentences  should  be  uttered  in  a 
low,  slow  tone,  gradually  intensified,  otherwise  the  voice  will 
break  down  in  a  very  few  minutes,  with  coughing  or  hoarse- 
ness. 

9.  A  growing  inability  to  sleep  in  sickness  is  ominous  of  a 
fatal  result ;  in  apparent  health,  it  indicates  the  failure  of  the 
mind  and  madness ;  so,  on  the  other  hand,  in  disease  or  de- 
mentia, a  very  slight  improvement  in  the  sleeping  should  be 
hailed  as  the  harbinger  of  restoration. 

10.  No  one  can  possibly  sink  if  the  head  is  thrust  entirely 
under  water  j  and  in  this  position  a  novice  can  swim  as  easily 


574  URINATION. 

as  walk,  and  get  to  shore  readily  by  lifting  the  head  at  intervals 
for  breath. 

11.  Intense  thirst  is  satiated  by  wading  in  water,  or  by 
keeping  the  clothing  saturated  with  water,  even  if  it  is  taken 
from  the  sea. 

12.  Water  cannot  satisfy  the  thirst  which  attends  cholera, 
dysentery,  diarrhoea,  and  some  other  forms  of  disease ;  in  fact, 
drinking  cold  water  seems  to  increase  the  thirst,  and  induce 
other  disagreeable  sensations  ;  but  this  thirst  will  be  perfectly 
and  pleasantly  subdued  by  eating  a  comparatively  small  amount 
of  ice,  swallowing  it  in  as  large  pieces  as  practicable,  and  as 
much  as  is  wanted. 

13.  Inflammations  are  more  safely  and  far  more  agreeably 
subdued  by  the  application  of  warm  water  than  of  cold. 

14.  Very  excessive  effort  in  a  short  space  of  time,  as  in 
running,  or  jumping  a  rope,  etc.,  has  repeatedly  caused  instant 
death,  by  apoplexy  of  the  lungs,  the  exercise  sending  the 
blood  there  faster  than  it  can  be  forwarded  to  the  heart,  and 
faster  than  it  can  be  purified  by  the  more  infrequent  breathing 
on  such  occasions. 

15.  No  disease  ever  comes  without  a  cause  or  without  a 
warning  ;  hence  endeavor  to  think  back  for  the  cause,  with  a 
view  to  avoid  it  in  future,  and  on  the  instant  of  any  unpleasant 
bodily  sensation,  cease  eating  absolutely  until  it  has  entirely 
disappeared,  at  least  for  twenty-four  hours  ;  if  still  remaining, 
consult  a  physician. 

16.  The  more  clothes  a  man  wears ;  the  more  bed-covering 
he  uses ;  the  closer  he  keeps  his  chamber,  whether  warm  or 
cold ;  the  more  he  confines  himself  to  the  house ;  the  more  nu- 
merous and  warm  his  night-garments,  —  the  more  readily  will 
he  take  cold,  under  all  circumstances,  as  the  more  a  thriftless 
youth  is  helped,  the  less  able  does  he  become  to  help  himself. 


URINATION. 

CAREFULLY  conducted  and  reliable  experiments  show,  that 
when  the  thermometer  is  at  seventy,  and  the  air  is  fine,  dry, 
and  clear,  a  healthy  adult  will  pass  something  less  than  three 


URf NATION.  575 

pints  of  urine  in  twenty-four  hours  ;  but  he  will  pass  six  pints 
if  the  day  is  raw  and  windy,  the  atmosphere  saturated  with 
dampness,  and  is  several  degrees  cooler. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  found,  that  on  a  beautiful,  clear  day, 
six  pints  of  fluid  are  passed  from  the  skin  and  lungs,  and  but 
four  pints  on  a  damp,  raw  day.  That  is,  on  fair  days,  thirty- 
eight  per  cent,  of  the  fluids  passed  from  the  system  is  in  the 
shape  of  urine,  and  sixty-two  per  cent,  by  skin  and  lungs. 
On  damp,  raw  days,  seventy-one  per  cent,  is  in  urine,  and 
twenty-nine  per  cent,  in  perspiration.  Every  observant  person 
knows  that  he  does  not  feel  as  lively,  cheerful,  and  buoyant  in 
raw,  damp  weather,  as  when  it  is  clear  and  dry.  The  reason 
of  this  is,  that  counting  a  pint  a  pound,  there  is  in  a  damp  day 
one  or  more  pounds  of  matter  in  the  system  than  there  ought 
to  be ;  it  is,  then,  no  wonder  that  on  such  days  we  feel  heavy, 
depressed,  dispirited,  and  gloomy.  In  fine  weather,  this  mat- 
ter, for  which  the  system  has  no  further  use,  passes  steadily 
from  the  body  as  fast  as  it  accumulates,  and  we  feel  elastic  in 
body  and  in  mind,  buoyant,  and  cheerful.  In  damp,  raw, 
windy,  and  cooler  weather,  the  pores  of  the  skin  are  closed  by 
these  four  agencies ;  the  waste  fluids  cannot  pass  in  this  direc- 
tion, but  must  find  exit,  in  greater  part,  through  the  bladder, 
to  be  emptied  at  varying  intervals.  It  follows,  then,  — 

1.  The  warmer  the  weather,  the  greater  the  perspiration, 
and  the  less  the  urine. 

2.  As  exercise  promotes  perspiration,  the  more  exercise  the 
less  urination. 

3.  Hence,  unequal  amounts  of  urination  from  day  to  day  do 
not  necessarily  indicate  disease ;  for  it  is  Nature  regulating 
the  "  waste  ways  "  of  the  system. 

4.  As  persons  feel  best  when  the  pores  of  the  skin  are  open, 
free,  and 'soft,  as  in  perspiration,  the  surface  of  the  body  should 
be  kept  soft,  warm,  and  clean,  as  a  means  of  health,  and  that 
general  feeling  of  wellness  which  happifies  the  heart. 

5.  If,  in  dull,  damp  weather,  the  system  is  burdened  by  a 
pound  or  more  of  fluid  substances  which  ought  to  be  out  of  it, 
almost  the  entire  amount  of  discomfort  engendered  by  it  could 
be  readily  avoided,  by  eating  and  drinking  one  half  less  on 
such  days  than  on  others ;  that  is,  about  a  pound  and  a  half, 
instead  of  three  pounds,  in  twenty-four  hours. 


576  COFFEE  SUBSTITUTES. 

6.  As  we  naturally  perspire  less  in  damp,  raw,  cold,  windy 
weather,  it  is  the  dictate  of  wisdom  to  excite  perspiration  arti- 
ficially by  steady  labor,  or  active  exercise  in  the  open  air. 

But  the  great  misfortune  is,  that,  instead  of  eating  less  and 
exercising  more  in  bad  weather  than  usual,  we  exercise  less, 
because  we  are  afraid  of  the  weather,  and  we  eat  more,  because 
we  have  nothing  else  to  do ;  and  being  the  only  source  of 
pleasure,  we  yield  ourselves  more  completely  to  it.  The  same 
reasoning  is  applicable  to  the  Sabbath  day — to  wit,  exercising 
but  little,  we  should  eat  but  little. 


COFFEE    SUBSTITUTES. 

THE  love  of  coffee  is  an  acquired  taste.  Perhaps  nine 
tenths  of  the  families  using  it  M  burn  "  it  almost  to  a  coal,  so 
that,  in  reality,  any  other  burnt  bitter  would  answer  quite  as 
well.  In  fact,  multitudes  in  the  far  West,  removed  from 
markets,  have  become  accustomed  to  use  burnt  bread-crust  as 
a  substitute,  which  certainly  is  not  injurious  ;  but  it  is  a  known 
fact  that  a  cup  of  some  mild,  hot  drink  at  meals  is  a  positive 
benefit,  while  a  glass  of  the  purest  cold  water  is  as  certainly 
an  injury,  especially  to  invalids  and  to  all  who  do  not  have 
robust  health. 

The  following  substitutes  for  coffee  have  been  collected,  in 
all  of  which  it  is  suggested,  first,  that  the  substitute  be  mixed 
with  the  genuine  article,  half-and-half ;  second,  that  in  order  to 
know  what  you  are  really  drinking,  roast  and  grind  your  own 
coffee.  In  this  way  only  can  you  know  that  you  are  not 
imposed  upon,  or  may  not  be  drinking  some  cheap  material, 
either  filthy  or  poisonous. 

1.  It  is  said  that  three  parts  of  Rio,  with  two  parts  of  old 
government  Java,  well  prepared,  is  quite  as  good,  if  not  superior, 
to  that  made  of  the  latter  alone. 

2.  WHEAT  COFFEE.  —  Wheat  coffee,  made  of  a  mixture  of 
eight  quarts  of  wheat  to  one  pound  of  real  coffee,  is  said  to 
afford  a  beverage  quite  as  agreeable  as  the  unadulterated  Rio, 
besides  being  much  more  wholesome. 

3.  RYE  COFFEE.  —  Take  a  peck  of  rye  and  cover  it  with 


COFFEE  SUBSTITUTES.  577 

water ;  let  it  steep  or  boil  until  the  grain  swells  or  commences 
to  burst ;  then  drain  or  dry  it.  Roast  to  a  deep  brown  color, 
and  prepare  as  other  coffee,  allowing  twice  the  time  for  boiling. 
Served  with  boiled  milk.  Wheat  coffee  probably  could  be 
made  the  same  way. 

4.  ANOTHER.  —  Take  some  rye ;  first,  scald  it ;  second,  dry 
it ;  third,  brown  it ;  and  then  mix  it  with  one  third  coffee  and 
two  thirds  rye ;  and  you  will  have  as  good  a  cup  of  coffee  as 
you  ever  drank. 

5.  SWEET-POTATO  COFFEE.  —  Take  sweet  potatoes,  cut  them 
fine  enough  to  dry  conveniently,  and  when  dried,  grind  in  a 
coffee-mill ;  dry  them  by  the  fire  or  stove,  at  this  season  of  the 
year,  or  by  the  sun,  when  that  will  do  it ;  grind  and  use  one 
and  a  half  tea-cupfuls  for  six  persons,  or  mixed  with  coffee  in 
such  proportions  as  you  like.     Some  omit  half  of  the  coffee, 
some  more. 

6.  BARLEY  COFFEE.  —  Take  common  barley,  or  the  skinless 
if  it  can  be  obtained ;  roast  as  you  would  coffee,  and  mix  in 
such  proportion  as  suits  your  taste.     It  is  very  good. 

7.  PEA  COFFEE.  —  It  is  probably  known  to  many  that  a  very 
large  per  cent,  of  the  ground  coffee  sold  at  the  stores  is  com- 
mon field-peas,  roasted  and  ground  with  the  coffee.     There  are 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  bushels  of  peas  annually  used  for 
that   purpose.      Those  who  are   in   the  habit  of  purchasing 
ground  coffee  can  do  better  to  buy  their  own  peas,  burn  and 
grind  them,  and  mix  to  suit  themselves. 

8.  CARROT  COFFEE.  —  This  is  recommended  by  an  exchange. 
Cut  up,  dry  and  grind,  and  mix  with  coffee  in  quantities  to  suit 
the  taste. 

9.  CHESTNUT  COFFEE.  —  Chestnuts,  also,  are  said  to  make  ex- 
cellent coffee. 

10.  DANDELION  ROOT,  dried  and  slightly  scorched ;   never 
burned. 

11.  CHICCORY  COFFEE.  —  Equal  weights  of  chiccory  and  coffee, 
dried  and  roasted  in  the  usual  manner.     The  chiccory  root  is 
raised  as  easily  as  carrots,  and  in  exactly  the  same  manner. 
To  prepare  the  root,  wash  it  clean ;  slice  lengthwise  in  four 
to  six  pieces,  according  to  size  ;  cut  in  two-inch  lengths  ;  dry, 
and  keep  in  a  dry  place  until  wanted.    Chiccory  is  largely  used 
to  adulterate  coffee  in  this  country,  and  especially  in  Europe, 


578  BEARDS. 

twenty-five  million  pounds  being  used  in  England  and  France 
alone. 

12.  EXCELSIOR  COFFEE  (our  own).  —  Half  a  cup  of  pure, 
new,  farm-house  milk  (such  as  is  furnished  to  New  Yorkers  by 
the  Rockland  County  and  New  Jersey  Milk  Association) ;  and 
while  almost  boiling  hot,  add  to  it  as  much  boiling  water ;  and 
when  sweetened  to  suit,  call  it  "  coffee,"  and  drink  it  down. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  if  the  same  preparation  be  pro- 
vided for  children  for  supper,  and  you  simply  call  it  "  tea,"  they 
would  not  perceive  any  difference  between  it  and  the  coffee 
for  breakfast.  After  several  years  use  of  both,  we  have  never 
been  able  ourselves  to  perceive  the  slightest  difference. 


BEARDS. 

THE  wise  and  kind  Infinite  never  made  anything  in  vain. 
Every  created  thing  has  not  only  its  use,  but  its  uses.  Wear- 
ing the  beard  is  no  exception  to  the  universal  law.  The  beard 
was  first  mentioned  thirty-three  centuries  ago,  in  connection 
with  a  Mosaic  injunction,  that  it  should  not  be  "  marred  "  —  de- 
formed. Its  first  great  design,  perhaps,  was  to  distinguish  the 
sexes  —  to  inspire  personal  dignity,  self-respect,  and  the  defer- 
ence of  woman.  The  next  great  use  is  its  influence  in  the 
preservation  of  man  in  those  out-door  exposures  to  winds,  and 
cold,  and  dust,  and  accidents  from  which  women  are  exempt, 
from  its  being  more  natural  for  her  to  remain  in-doors  in  atten- 
tion to  domestic  duties.  Since  we  first  mentioned,  some  five 
years  ago,  the  advantages  of  keeping  the  mouth  shut,  as  a 
preservative  against  colds,  pleurisies,  and  pneumonias,  by  its 
sending  the  air  to  the  lungs  through  the  circuit  of  the  head, 
thus  warming  it,  a  book  has  been  written  on  the  subject.  The 
beard  on  the  upper  lip  is  kept  warm  by  its  living  connection 
with  the  body,  and  by  the  warm  air  constantly  passing  out  of 
the  nostrils  ;  this  warmth  is  imparted  to  the  incoming  air,  and 
thus  effectually  prevents  those  dangerous  shocks  of  cold  driv- 
ing in  upon  the  warm  lungs,  which  so  often  cut  short  human 
life  in  three  or  four  days.  The  beard,  being  warm,  evaporates 
any  dampness  in  the  atmosphere,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree, 
and  thus  gives  a  purer  air  to  the  lungs ;  rendered  still  more 


BEARDS.  579 

pure  by  the  dust,  with  which  the  air  is  always  full,  being  de- 
tained in  the  meshes  of  the  hair. 

The  throat  and  upper  part  of  the  chest  are  greatly  exposed 
to  cold  ;  their  imprudent  exposure  engenders  some  of  the  most 
fatal  forms  of  disease,  such  as  bronchitis,  consumption,  diph- 
theria, and  the  like.  The  beard  is  an  extraordinary  protection 
against  cold.  The  thinnest  gossamer  veil  over  the  face  will 
make  the  coldest  winds  endurable.  Delicate  and  silken  as  the 
hair  is,  its  protecting  influence,  in  keeping  the-  scalp  comfort- 
ably warm,  is  very  impressively  appreciated  by  those  who  have 
become  bald. 

Inconsistent  as  it  may  seem  at  first  sight,  the  beard  not  only 
keeps  the  p^rts  genially  warm  in  winter,  but  by  its  evaporat- 
ing influence  cools  the  parts  wonderfully  in  the  hottest 
weather,  to  say  nothing  of  its  breaking  the  force  of  the  hot  sun. 

Another  advantage  of  the  beard  is  its  power  to  break  the  force 
of  blows,  and  arrest  the  stroke  of  a  cutting  instrument  against 
so  vital  and  otherwise  easily  vulnerable  a  part  as  the  throat. 
Many  persons  aggravate  throat  complaints  by  mufflers,  wearing 
scarfs  or  extra  covering  about  the  neck ;  these  do  keep  the 
throat  warm,  but  in  every  change  of  position  of  the  head  or 
face,  some  part  of  the  neck  or  throat  is  moved  from  the  cover- 
ing ;  the  covering  does  not  adapt  itself  to  or  follow  the  move- 
ment ;  hence  the  cold  air  rushes  in  upon  that  unprotected  part 
and  chills  it ;  but  the  beard  follows  every  motion  of  the  head 
or  face  faithfully,  and  thus  is  the  most  perfect  muffler  that  can 
possibly  be  devised.  Nature's  provisions  cannot  be  interfered 
with  with  impunity.  The  Orientals,  who  shave  the  head  and 
wear  the  beard,  suffer  more  from  ophthalmia,  an  eye  disease, 
but  have  fine  teeth.  Europeans,  who  shave  the  beard  and 
wear  the  hair,  suffer  but  little  from  ophthalmia,  but  have  very 
defective  teeth ;  this  last  result  may  arise  from  the  beard 
modifying  the  coldness  of  the  air  which  passes  into  the  mouth, 
thus  keeping  the  temperature  of  the  teeth  more  equaL  The 
early  Christian  fathers  denounced  shaving  as  a  violation  of  the 
law  of  God.  The  beard  of  John  Mayo  of  Germany  touched 
the  ground  when  he  stood  upright.  Steel-grinders,  stone- 
cutters, engineers,  firemen,,  and  all  others  who  work  in  dust, 
heat,  or  steam,  should  especially  wear  the  beard.  Daily  shav- 
ing is  an  intolerable  nuisance  —  a  useless  waste  of  time. 


580  EPILEPSY. 


EPILEPSY, 

« 

OB  "  Falling  Sickness,"  is  the  sudden  loss  of  all  conscious- 
ness, with  convulsions,  foaming  at  the  mouth,  or  livid  face, 
with  utter  prostration  of  power  and  sense ;  in  a  few  minutes 
the  patient  recovers,  but  without  the  slightest  recollection  of 
what  has  taken  place.  These  attacks  come  on,  apparently,  as 
sudden  and  as  unanticipated  as  a  stroke  of  lightning  in  a  clear 
sky.  The  original  word  means  "  to  seize  upon,"  —  as  at  any 
time,  in  conversing  with  a  friend,  or  seated  at  the  table,  or 
riding  in  a  carriage,  or  sitting  by  the  fire,  and  with  every  ex- 
ternal appearance  of  perfect  health,  these  "  fits  "  come  on  with 
fearful  contortions,  with  grinding  of  teeth,  and  uncontrollable 
action  of  every  limb  and  muscle  of  the  body.  It  is  most  gen- 
erally an  incurable  disease  of  the  brain,  as  a  result  of  a  scrofu- 
lous constitution.  This  epileptic  condition,  or  susceptibility, 
may  be  in  a  person,  but  may  never  be  brought  out,  never  de- 
veloped, because  an  exciting  cause  may  never  be  applied,— 
just  as  powder  will  never  explode  unless  a  spark  is  applied. 
The  object  of  this  article  is  mainly  to  state  some  of  the  excit- 
ing causes  of  epilepsy,  and  thus  prevent  the  development  of 
so  unfortunate  a  habit  of  body ;  for  its  nature  is  such,  that,  if 
it  occurs  but  a  few  times,  the  habit  is  formed  for  a  lifetime, 
or  an  exemption  is  purchased  only  at  the  price  of  an  eternal 
and  painful  vigilance. 

The  epileptic  habit  is  nearly  always  set  up  in  early  child- 
hood, the  most  common  causes  being  terror  or  sudden  fright, 
such  as  may  be  occasioned  by  some  sudden  noise,  or  the  pres- 
entation of  some  terrifying  object.  It  is  not  always  that  the 
child  survives  the  first  fit,  and  pity  is  it  that  it  ever  should  ; 
for  it  is  nothing  short  of  a  living  crucifixion  to  a  parent's  heart 
to  witness  the  terrible  contortions  which  seem  to  rack,  with 
unendurable  agony,  every  fibre  of  the  innocent  and  uncom- 
plaining sufferer ;  we  say  "  seem,"  with  an  emphasis,  for  every 
circumstance  connected  with  an  epileptic  attack  indicates, 
most  unmistakably,  an  utter  unconsciousness  of  any  bodily 
suffering.  A  child  under  three  years  of  age  was  left  in  charge 
of  a  nurse,  while  the  mother  attended  an  evening  party.  On 


EPILEPSY.  581 

repairing  to  its  little  crib,  on  her  return,  to  see  that  all  was 
well,  —  after  the  assurance  of  the  maid  that  it  had  been  sleep- 
ing soundly,  not  having  made  M  the  slightest  bit  of  a  noise,"  — 
the  eyes  were  glaring  widely  open,  the  whole  features  were 
stamped  with  an  expression  of  vague  and  indescribable  horror, 
and  life  was  extinct.  At  the  feet  of  the  child  had  been  placed 
a  human  skull  taken  from  a  doctor's  office  table. 

Parents  sometimes  frighten  their  children  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  witnessing  their  gestures  and  exclamations ;  as  to  its 
reprehensibility,  we  need  make  no  remark. 

When  an  epileptic  attack  is  repeated  two,  three,  or  four 
times,  there  is  seldom  any  refuge  short  of  the  grave,  the  end 
being  fatuity,  or  sudden  death.  Our  greatest  anxiety,  in  this 
article,  is  to  attract  parental  attention  to  the  first  attack ;  so  that, 
by  exercising  a  most  untiring  vigilance  against  the  causes 
which  may  repeat  it,  they  may  prevent  the  establishment  of 
the  terrible  habit  for  a  few  years ;  for,  after  children  enter 
their  teens,  the  susceptibility  of  an  attack  is  almost  nothing. 
The  cause  next  in  frequency  to  terror  and  sudden  alarm  is 
connected  with  the  stomach,  as  eating  some  unaccustomed  or 
indigestible  article  of  food  in  large  quantities.  We  once  knew 
a  beautiful  boy  of  promise,  under  ten,  who,  having,  with  some 
companions,  got  hold  of  some  eggs,  boiled  them  hard,  and  ate 
several,  without  anything  else ;  he  died  in  convulsions,  in  a 
few  hours.  Often  are  our  children  on  the  verge  of  such  re- 
sults by  the  inattention  of  parents  to  their  feeding ;  but  they 
are  relieved  by  spontaneous  vomiting,  bringing  up  a  mass  of 
sour,  undigested  food,  perfectly  nauseating,  thus  preventing 
fatal  fever,  or  the  more  terrible  epilepsy. 

Bathing  a  child  in  cold  water,  soon  after  a  hearty  meal,  is 
quite  sufficient  to  bring  on  an  epileptic  attack  in  a  scrofulous 
constitution. 

We  were  once  called  to  an  only  child,  about  nine  years  old, 
in  alarming  convulsions,  with  incoherent  utterances.  He  had 
eaten  a  hearty  dinner,  and,  from  some  childish  freak,  had  fol- 
lowed it  up  with  an  enormous  amount  of  table-salt.  Nature 
would  not  vomit ;  but  art  gave  instantaneous  relief  to  an  out- 
raged stomach,  and  little  Richard  was  himself  again. 

Eating  largely  of  soggy  bread,  or  of  the  sodden  undercrust 
of  a  pie,  or  of  pudding  a  little  soured,  may  bring  on  an  attack. 


582  EPILEPSY. 

When  an  epileptic  habit  is  once  established,  our  main  attention 
must  be  directed  to  avoiding  the  causes  of  attack,  and  to  the 
prevention  of  a  threatened  attack,  waiting  the  mean  while  for 
one  of  those  periods  of  life  which  are  generally  believed  to 
make  radical  changes  of  constitution,  either  for  better  or 
worse,  —  the  most  decided  of  which  are  the  few  years  includ- 
ing fourteen  and  forty-two. 

One  man  represents  that  he  prevents  attacks  in  his  own 
case  by  an  iron  wedge,  which  he  always  carries  about  him ; 
we  should  think  a  wooden  one  would  answer  the  purpose,  with 
greater  convenience.  As  soon  as  he  perceives  a  premonitory 
symptom  —  different  in  different  persons,  but  present  in  all, 
and  which  a  close  observation  will  soon  learn  —  he  introduces 
it  into  his  mouth,  so  as  to  stretch  it  open  to  the  utmost  possible 
extent.  The  forcible  distention,  or  extension,  of  any  other 
muscle  of  the  body  would  do  the  same  thing,  — the  pulling  of 
a  leg  or  arm,  for  example,  but  this  requires  the  aid  of  another 
person ;  but,  as  everybody  is  often  alone,  necessarily  it  is  im- 
portant to  have  a  remedy  which  the  patient  can  apply  himself 
promptly,  and  at  all  times.  Let  any  reader,  who  is  exempt 
from  this  affliction,  stop  a  moment  in  affectionate  gratitude  to 
Him  who  ruleth  over  all,  that  such  a  lot  is  not  his  own. 

It  has  been  said  that  a  black  silk  handkerchief,  thrown  over 
the  face  while  the  fit  is  on,  will  bring  the  person  "  to "  in- 
stantly. No  person  subject  to  these  attacks  should  ever  be 
allowed  to  be  aloner  or  on  horseback,  or  to  walk  along  the  banks 
of  rivers,,  or  in  crowded  streets,  for  obvious  reasons.  The  at- 
tacks are  sometimes  indefinitely  postponed  by  the  most  vigi- 
lant attention  to  diet.  We  personally  know  that  this  was  the 
case  with  the  great  author  of  The  Cause  and  Cure  of  Infidelity. 

While  medicine  has  no  power  to  cure  epilepsy,  it  is  very 
certain  that  grown  persons  can  keep  it  in  abeyance  by  the  ex- 
ercise of  a  close  observation  and  a  sound  judgment,  —  can,  in 
other  words,  ward  off  an  attack  for  a  lifetime,  by  attention  to 
two  things :  First,  by  avoiding,  as  to  quantity  and  quality,  the 
food  which  causes  any  kind  of  discomfort.  Second,  by  regu- 
lating the  system  so  as  to  have  one  full,  free  action  of  the 
bowels  every  twenty-four  hours.  To  look  for  restoration  in 
any  other  direction  is  utterly  hopeless. 

A  gentleman  who  was  afflicted  for  some  time  with  epilepsy, 


FEVER  AND  AGUE.  583 

and  who  writes,  "  I  am  now  entirely  recovered,"  adds,  "  While 
under  the  crushing  effects  of  this  disorder  I  was  nearly  a 
worthless  specimen  of  humanity ;  now  I  am  cured,  and  under- 
stand how  to  stay  cured.  I  am  as  vigorous,  fenergetic,  and 
competent,  as  at  any  period  of  my  life  ;  and  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two  conditions,  upon  the  nervous  and  mental  powers, 
is  wonderful."  Restoration  was  effected,  in  this  case,  by  the 
application  of  the  principles  already  suggested. 


FEVER  AND   AGUE. 

IN  returning  from  the  "Springs,"  the  Sea-side,  and  other 
places  of  resort  during  the  heats  of  summer,  many  families  have 
noticed,  in  the  autumnal  and  winter  months,  that  more  or  less 
of  the  members,  especially  the  children,  are  quite  unwell  at 
times.  In  a  day  or  two  they  get  better  only  to  feel  worse 
again,  and  this  annoying  process  continues  till  the  cold  weather 
has  steadily  set  in.  Some  persons  are  regularly  ailing,  at  in- 
tervals of  days  or  weeks.  The  name  given  to  this  form  of 
sickness  by  common  people  is  "  the  creeps,"  as  the  symptoms 
come  on  with  a  chilly  sensation  of  the  hands  and  feet,  or  along 
the  back,  extending,  generally,  over  the  whole  body,  when 
there  is,  sometimes,  a  general  shiver  or  shake,  to  be  followed  by 
a  fever  during  the  afternoon,  and  going  off  with  a  perspiration 
during  the  night.  In  the  Western  country  this  is  a  process 
which  the  person  attacked  has  to  go  through  with  every 
twenty-four  hours  for  weeks  and  months,  to  be  resumed  the 
next  year,  and  the  next,  until,  in  five  or  ten  or  more  years,  the 
constitution  becomes  hardened  to  it,  or  it  wears  itself  out, 
provided  the  unhappy  patient  does  not,  in  the  mean  time,  take 
a  bad  cold  and  become  consumptive,  or  die  more  summarily 
of  some  more  active  malady. 

There  is  scarcely  a  locality  within  thirty  miles  of  New  York 
where  families  can  remain  until  the  first  of  autumn  without 
having  the  seeds  of  this  hateful  malady  sown  in  the  system, 
to  fructify  on  their  return  home,  and  thus  do  away  with  all 
the  good  effects  of  a  summer's  sojourn  in  the  country.  It  is 
not  at  all  likely  that  this  state  of  things  will  materially  alter  in 


584  FEVER  AND  AGUE. 

this  generation,  for  the  laws  of  nature  are  uniform ;  but  it  is 
desirable  to  interpose  some  means  of  fortifying  the  system 
against  these  attacks  by  scientific  appliances.  This  is  cer- 
tainly demonstrable  and  possible ;  but  to  do  so  satisfactorily, 
it  is  necessary  to  understand  the  whole  subject,  which  may 
be  made  exceedingly  interesting,  and  is  a  matter  of  personal 
concern  to  every  one  who  is  in  the  habit  of  "  going  to  the 
country,"  in  the  summer  time.  To  have  the  enjoyment  of 
such  a  pleasant  sojourn  constantly  clouded  with  the  apprehen- 
sion of  the  discomforts  of  having  the  "  creeps  "  for  an  indefinite 
time  on  returning  to  town,  is  certainly  not  a  pleasant  con- 
templation. 

The  cause  of  fever  and  ague  is  w  miasma,"  the  meaning  of 
which  word  is  emanation,  "  a  rising  from,"  as  it  is  supposed 
to  come  up  from  the  surface  of  the  earth  and  impregnate  the 
atmosphere,  which,  being  breathed  into  the  lungs,  is  taken  a 
few  seconds  later  into  the  circulation,  being  intimately  mixed 
with  the  blood,  and  poisons  it,  causing  it  to  be  thick,  sluggish, 
black,  and  impure.  In  some  situations  this  miasma  is  so  con- 
centrated, saturating  the  atmosphere,  as  it  were,  consequently 
thickening  the  blood  more  rapidly,  and  to  such  an  extent  that 
it  flows  at  first  slowly,  and  at  length  scarcely  moves  at  all  at 
the  extremities,  and  circulates  perceptibly  only  about  the 
heart ;  and,  as  the  blood  begins  to  die  the  instant  it  ceases  to 
move,  the  limbs  grow  cold,  the  veins  are  distended,  the  fire  of 
life  goes  out,  and  the  man  dies  —  of  congestive  fever.  Some 
have  been  known  to  die  in  the  chill  of  fever  and  ague,  although, 
generally,  fever  and  ague  is  not  considered  any  more  danger- 
ous than  the  toothache  ;  hence,  in  both  cases,  the  unfortunate 
victim  has  very  little  of  the  sympathy  of  those  around  him. 

The  substance  of  miasma  has  been  considered  ethereal,  as 
the  atmosphere  of  a  miasmatic  locality,  upon  chemical  analysis, 
made  by  different  experts  and  in  the  most  careful  manner,  has 
not  been  found  to  contain  any  ingredients,  hitherto,  which  did 
not  belong  to  a  pure  and  healthful  atmosphere.  Still,  although 
the  miasma  could  not  be  detected,  it  was  known  to  be  an 
entity,  an  actual  thing,  and  men  had  to  be  content  with  study- 
ing its  nature,  and  its  effects,  and  its  laws,  by  observation  on 
its  modes  of  action,  then  recording  the  facts  observed,  and 
deducing  the  laws  of  its  action  therefrom.  The  first  name 


FEVER  AND  AGUE.  585 

given  to  it  was  "  marsh  miasm,"  .because  the  effects  were  ob- 
served in  the  most  marked  manner  in  the  neighborhood  of 
marshes,  of  low,  flat,  damp  lands,  where  vegetation  was  rank. 

It  was  next  observed  that  the  sickness  arising  from  marsh 
miasm  did  not  occur  in  cold  weather;  another  step  forward 
was  then  made,  that  miasm  was  peculiar  to  damp  soils,  and 
that  heat  was  necessary  for  its  production.  But  the  effects 
of  miasm  were  not  observed  on  the  sea-shore,  although  there 
were  dampness,  and  heat,  and  a  flat  surface.  The  reason  must 
be  because  it  was  sandy ;  there  was  no  vegetation ;  hence  an- 
other element  was  essential  to  miasm.  There  must  not  only 
be  dampness  and  heat,  but  there  must  be  vegetation;  and 
when  it  was  later  observed  that  miasmatic  diseases  were  more 
general  and  maligmant  in  the  Fall  of  the  year,  and  that  was 
the  season  when  vegetation  began  to  decay,  and  die,  and  de- 
compose, the  concatenation  was  complete,  and  the  full  idea 
was  expressed  in  the  proposition  —  Malaria  is  an  emanation 
from  decaying  vegetation  in  warm  weather ;'  hence  miasm  was 
caused  by  vegetable  decomposition,  —  such  decomposition  re- 
quiring moisture  and  heat. 

So  much  for  the  nature  and  cause  of  miasm.  Its  effects  were, 
from  time  to  time,  noticed  as  originating  in  man,  diarrhoea, 
dysentery,  and  all  forms  of  fevers.  Its  laws  of  action  were 
next  investigated ;  observation  proved  it  milder  in  the  Spring, 
more  malignant  in  the  Autumn.  There  was  vegetation  enough 
in  the  Spring,  and  moisture  enough,  but  not  sufficient  heat  in 
our  latitude  to  cause  vegetable  decomposition. 

It  was  next  observed  that  persons  exposed  in  miasmatic  lo- 
calities in  the  night  suffered  more  than  those  exposed  in  the 
daytime.  For  fifty  years  previous  to  the  discovery  of  gold  in 
California,  it  was  known  among  the  commanders  of  vessels  that 
sailors  might  go  ashore  in  certain  tropical  climes  in  the  day- 
time, but  to  pass  a  night  on  shore  was  certain  death.  The 
more  intelligent  adventurers  who  first  went  to  California  via 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama  made  practical  use  of  this  fact,  and 
began  the  passage  early  in  the  day,  so  as  to  get  to  the  higher 
points  of  land  before  night  came  on.  The  immediate  cause 
of  the  fatal  attack  of  illness  to  Bishop  Potter,  in  his  visit  to 
California,  was  inattention  to  this  fact ;  for  he  left  the  ship  to 
perform  a  marriage  ceremony,  remained  on  shore  during  the 


586  FEVER  AND  AGUE. 

night,  was  soon  attacked  with  a  new  form  of  disease,  and  lived 
just  long  enough  to  land  at  San  Francisco. 

Old  Charleston  merchants  will  remember  that,  while  it  was 
considered  death  for  them  to  sleep  in  the  city  during  the  sum- 
mer for  a  single  night,  habitually  rode  into  the  city  to  transact 
business  in  the  middle  of  the  day.  Twenty  years  ago  the 
doorways  and  steps  of  public  buildings  in  Rome  were  crowded 
with  sleepers  in  harvest-time.  They  were  the  men  who 
worked  in  the  Pontine  Marshes  during  the  daytime ;  they 
knew  it  was  death  to  sleep  there  at  night. 

Without  narrating  each  particular  step  in  the  discovery  of 
the  additional  laws  of  miasm,  suffice  it  to  say,  that  in  ordinary 
localities,  the  effects  of  miasm  were  found  to  be  more  decided 
in  the  hours  including  sunrise  and  sunset,  and  that  at  other 
times  it  was  almost  innoxious.  It  was  very  natural,  then,  to 
inquire  why  was  it  most  hurtful  at  sunrise  and  sunset  to  re- 
main in  a  miasmatic  locality  ?  It  must  be  because  it  was  most 
concentrated  at  that  time ;  there  was  more  of  it  in  a  given 
amount  of  air  breathed  into  the  lungs.  Cold  condenses  all  at- 
mospheres ;  heat  rarefies,  expands,  and  sends  upward.  The 
heat  of  the  day  generated  the  miasm  from  the  damp,  decaying 
vegetation,  and  it  rose  rapidly  towards  the  clouds ;  but,  when 
the  sun  began  to  decline,  the  atmosphere  became  cooler,  more 
heavy,  fell  towards  the  surface,  and  settled  within  a  few  feet 
of  it,  that  layer  next  the  earth  being  most  malignant,  and  every 
foot  higher  the  less  so.  It  is  known  that  when  a  traveller  with 
a  dog  entered  the  Grotto  del  Cano,  the  dog  died,  while  the 
owner  remained  uninjured,  he  being  several  feet  higher,  the 
gas  causing  death  to  the  dog,  being  so  much  more  concentrated 
when  on  the  ground.  It  is  known  that  a  man  lying  down  in  a 
poppy-field  will  die  before  the  morning,  at  certain  seasons ; 
but.  if  he  works  in  it,  his  standing  up  enables  him  to  breathe 
a  less  compact  layer  of  air.  At  sunrise  the  atmosphere  begins 
to  warm  and  the  miasm  to  ascend,  and  in  the  course  of  an 
hour  it  has  ascended  higher  than  the  head,  and  hence  is  not 
taken  into  the  lungs.  At  midday  it  has  gone  to  the  heavens  ; 
at  midnight  it  lies  immediately  on  the  surface,  in  each  case  not 
breathed  into  the  lungs  by  a  man  on  his  feet. 

Now,  just  at  this  point,  a  practical  and  important  lesson  was 
to  be  learned,  which,  for  actual  practical  results  in  proportion 


FEVER  AND  AGUE.  587 

to  the  expense,  and  labor,  and  trouble,  is  scarcely  second  to 
any  other  in  the  whole  range  of  sanitary  science ;  not  new, 
but  too  simple  to  command  any  special  general  attention.  Jf 
the  heat  from  the  sun,  by  a  general  law  of  nature,  so  rarefies 
the  miasmatic  air  as  to  make  it  innoxious,  artificial  heat  must 
do  the  same  thing.  If  a  man  will  keep  a  brisk  fire  burning  in 
his  family-room  for  the  hour  or  two  including  sunrise  and  sun- 
set, and  will  remain  in  that  room  during  that  time,  it  will  be  an 
absolute  exemption  from  all  autumnal  diseases,  and  from  chol- 
era itself,  other  things  being  equal ;  for  cholera  is  known  to 
make  its  greatest  ravages  where  common  epidemics  prevail 
in  ordinary  times,  such  as  fevers,  dysentery,  and  diarrhoea,— 
and  cholera  is  only  an  aggravated  diarrhoea,  as  yellow  and 
congestive  fevers  are  the  exaggeration  of  common  fever  and 
ague. 

The  dreadful  ship-fever,  jail-fever,  and  the  epidemics  that 
occur  in  crowded  vessels,  arise,  always,  from  the  decay  of 
vegetable  matter  in  the  hold  of  vessels ;  the  wood  of  which 
the  vessel  is  composed  being  in  a  state  of  constant  dampness 
and  inevitable  decay.  Now,  as  there  can  be  no  decay  where 
there  is  dryness,  and  heat  makes  dry,  there  is  only  one  way 
to  disinfect  a  vessel  to  make  it  heathy.  Empty  it,  make  it 
dry  as  a  powder-horn,  by  stoves,  or  by  the  more  expeditious 
and  less  expensive  method  of  introducing  heated  air  into  it 
from  a  steam  engine.  A  vessel  may  be  frozen  up,  and  thus 
made  healthy ;  but  it  is  only  temporary ;  the  miasm  was  only 
condensed,  and  will  make  up  to  all  its  virulence,  as  did  the 
viper  in  the  fable,  as  soon  as  it  is  warmed.  Heat,  on  the  con- 
trary, rarefies  the  miasm,  and  sends  it  to  the  clouds,  and,  by 
its  drying  effects,  prevents  renewal. 

The  writer  spent  forty  years  of  his  life  in  various  malarious 
countries,  and,  acting  in  the  light  of  the  above  principles,  was 
never  sick  an  hour  in  any  of  them,  where  he  travelled  on 
horseback,  in  the  heats  of  midsummer  days,  by  the  pestiferous 
vapors  of  the  bayous,  and  visiting  the  sick  at  midnight,  where- 
ever  and  whenever  called ;  but  at  sunrise  and  sunset,  in  the 
heats  of  July,  he  was  by  a  blazing  fire  in  his  own  house,  or 
secured  one  if  abroad.  And  he  can  name  families  in  the  West, 
in  districts  where  fever  and  ague  was  universal,  except  in  a 
solitary  house,  here  and  there,  where  the  friendly  fire  was 


588  SUMMERINGS. 

started  at  sunrise  and  sunset  in  the  fatuity-room ;  and  the 
breakfast  was  eaten  before  going  outside  the  door,  and  the 
supper  taken  at  sundown,  the  excitement  of  the  circulation 
caused  by  the  meal,  and  its  strengthening  effects  on  the  sys- 
tem, helping  to  fortify  it  against  the  attacks  of  malarious 
influences. 

But  it  has  been  announced  as  a  discovery  made  by  a  physi- 
cian in  Chicago,  and  by  a  lady  in  France,  and  by  her  commu- 
nicated to  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  that  the  cause  of  epidemic 
fever  and  the  autumnal  diseases  was  discovered  to  be  a  living 
thing,  the  gentleman  calling  it  vegetative,  —  a  sporule ;  the 
lady  asserts  it  to  be  an  entozon, — a  breathing  animal. 

But  it  is  curious  to  observe  that  this  sporule  or  entozon  is 
under  the  identical  laws  supposed  to  belong  to  miasm ;  that 
heat  destroys  it ;  cold  benumbs  it ;  that  it  is  most  vigorous  in 
its  ill  effects  in  the  system  in  the  cool  of  the  evening  and  the 
morning,  and  that  it  is  only  found  in  marshy  places,  in  warm 
weather.  Their  existence  is  said  to  be  made  visible  by  the 
microscope,  —  are  seen  in  the  saliva,  and  attached  to  the  inner 
portion  of  the  mouth ;  and  that,  if  an  atmosphere  containing 
them  is  taken  to  a  distance  where  it  is  not  naturally  existing, 
and  is  breathed  by  a  person  in  health,  that  person,  in  a  few 
days,  has  fever  and  ague. 


SUMMERINGS. 

1.  IN  going  to  the  country  to  spend  your  summer,  leave 
business  behind,  but  take  with  you  your  entire  stock  of  pa- 
tience, courtesy,  self-respect,  and  religion.     Go  as  plain  "  John 
Smith,  gentleman." 

2.  If  you  have  the  first  claim  to  being  well-bred,  you  will  be 
the  last  person  in  the  world  to  volunteer  any  information  on 
the  subject.     If  it  must  be  told,  let  it  be  by  your  conduct ;  let 
your  entire  deportment  prove  that  you  are  a  lady  or  a  gen- 
tleman. 

3.  Do  not  profess  that  you  "  know  "  Mr.  Astor,  Mr.  Grinnell, 
Mr.  Minturn,  or  other  distinguished  citizens,  when  your  entire 
knowledge  consists  in  their  having  been  pointed  out  to  you  on 
the  street. 


SCALDS  AND  BURNS.  589 

4.  Avoid  claiming  acquaintance  with  this  or  that  family  of 
note,  when  you  only  happen  to  have  spoken  to  them  on  a  rail- 
car  or  steamboat,  or  in  some  purely  business  transaction.     An 
enterprising  individual  once  claimed  that  he  kne.w  a  distin- 
guished judge  very  well.     On  inquiry,  it  was  found  that  the 
said  judge  had  once  sent  him  to  the  penitentiary  ! 

5.  If  you  have  the  first  mite  of  common  sense,  and  really  go 
to  the  country  for  recreation,  enjoyment,  and  health,  leave  your 
best  and  second-best  clothing  at  home ;  take  only  your  com- 
mon wardrobe,  and  but  a  small  part  of  that ;  not  only  that  the 
persons  you  stop  with  may  feel  more  easy,  but  that  you  may 
feel  freer  yourself  to  scale  fences,  climb  trees,  scramble  up 
mountain-sides,  wade  across  creeks,  penetrate  forest  tangles, 
and  jump  Jim  Crow  generally. 

6.  Never  turn. up  your  nose  at  anything  at  the  table ;  if  you 
have  the  slightest  disposition  to  do  so,  you  may  be  sure  it  is  a 
pug,  and  isn't  long  enough  to  turn.     If  you  don't  like  a  thing, 
let  it  alone ;  eat  nothing,  and  by  the  next  meal  you  may  be 
glad  to  get  anything. 

7.  Remember  that,  in  going  to  the  country,  a  sensible  man's 
object  is  neither  to  dress  nor  eat,  chiefly,  but  to  obtain  mental 
repose,  pure  air,  and  unrestrained  exercise. 

8.  Endeavor  to  conform,  without  apparent  effort,  to  the  ar- 
rangements of  the  family  with  whom  you  board,  and  to  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  people  around  you,  as  far  as  they 
do  not  compromise  your  principles  of  good  morals  and  good 
taste. 

9.  Be  cheerful,  be  kind,  be  considerate,  be  accommodating. 

10.  Do  not  obtrude  your  political  or  religious  sentiments. 

11.  Shun  argument  and  controversy  on  any  and  all  subjects. 

12.  Let  your  courtesy  come  out  naturally  j  and  if  religious, 
don't  be  a  Pharisee. 


SCALDS  AND   BURNS. 

ON  the  instant  of  the  accident,  plunge  the  part  under  cold 
water.  This  relieves  the  pain  in  a  second,  and  allows  all 
hands  to  become  composed.  If  the  part  cannot  be  kept  under 
water,  cover  it  over  with  dry  flour  an  inch  deep  or  more.  In 


590  MUSIC. 

both  cases  pain  ceases,  because  the  air  is  excluded.  In  many 
instances  nothing  more  will  be  needed  after  the  flour ;  simply 
let  it  remain  until  it  falls  off,  when  a  new  skin  will  be  found 
under.  In  severer  cases,  while  the  part  injured  is  under  wa- 
ter, simmer  a  leek  or  two  in  an  earthen  vessel,  with  half  their 
bulk  of  hog's  lard,  until  the  leeks  are  soft,  then  strain  through 
a  muslin  rag.  This  makes  a  greenish-colored  ointment,  which, 
when  cool,  spread  thickly  on  a  linen  cloth,  and  apply  it  to  the 
injured  part.  If  there  are  blisters,  let  out  the  water.  When 
the  part  becomes  feverish  and  uncomfortable,  renew  the  oint- 
ment, and  a  rapid,  painless  cure  will  be  the  result,  if  the^  pa- 
tient, in  the  mean  while,  lives  exclusively  on  fruits,  coarse 
bread,  and  other  light,  loosening  food. 

If  the  scald  or  burn  is  not  very  severe,  —  that  is,  if  it  is  not 
deeper  than  the  outer  skin,  —  an  ointment  made  of  sulphur, 
with  lard  enough  to  make  it  spread  stiffly  on  a  linen  rag,  will 
be  effectual.  The  leek-ointment  is  most  needed  when  there  is 
ulceration  from  neglected  burns,  or  when  the  injury  is  deeper 
than  the  surface.  As  this  ointment  is  very  healing  and  sooth- 
ing in  the  troublesome  excoriations  of  children,  and  also  in 
foul,  indolent  ulcers,  and  is  said  to  be  efficacious  in  modifying, 
or  preventing  altogether,  the  pitting  of  small-pox,  it  would 
answer  a  good  purpose  if  families  were  to  keep  it  on  hand  for 
emergencies,  —  the  sulphur-ointment  for  moderate  cases,  and 
the  leek-ointment  in  those  of  greater  severity,  or  of  a  deeper 
nature. 


MUSIC. 

Music  refines  the  taste,  purifies  the  heart,  and  elevates  our 
nature.  It  does  more,  —  it  soothes  in  sorrow,  tranquillizes  in 
passion,  and  wears  away  the  irritabilities  of  life.  It  intensifies 
love,  it  fires  patriotism,  and  makes  the  altar  of  our  devotion 
burn  with  a  purer,  holier  flame.  Not  only  man,  but  the  brutes 
themselves  have  been  restrained  and  charmed  by  the  bewitch- 
ing power  which  it  possesses.  And  in  the  still  twilight  hour, 
when  sweet,  sad  memories  go  back  upon  the  distant  past,  and 
hover  lovingly  about  the  places  where  we  played,  and  the  per- 
sons whom  we  loved,  but  now  gone,  in  their  youth,  and  beauty, 
and  purity,  to  return  no  more,  who  does  not  know  that  the 


THE   SABBATH  REST.  591 

soul  drinks  more  deeply  in  of  the  saddening  sweetness  when 
it  breaks  out  in  the  soft,  low  notes  of  song,  or  the  fingers  in- 
stinctively sweep  through  diapasons  absolutely  ravishing? 

And  when  tedious  disease  has  dampened  the  fires  of  life,  has 
removed  its  gilding,  and  written  "vanity"  on  all  things 
earthly  ;  when  wealth,  and  fame,  and  worldly  honor  are  felt  to 
be  nothing ;  when  the  aims,  and  ambitions,  and  aspirations, 
which  were  wont  to  rouse  up  all  the  energies  of  nature  towards 
their  accomplishment,  fail  of  their  accustomed  power,  music 
renders  the  burden  of  sickness  light,  and  makes  us  all  oblivi- 
ous of  pain  and  suffering.  For  these  reasons,  that  parent  has 
largely  neglected  a  religious  duty,  has  been  strangely  for- 
getful of  one  of  the  highest  of  all  obligations,  who  fails  to  afford 
his  children,  while  yet  young,  all  the  facilities  in  his  power  for 
fostering  and  cultivating  whatever  taste  for  music  they  pos- 
sess, whether  vocal  or  instrumental ;  for,  in  after  life,  and 
in  all  its  vicissitudes,  those  who  practise  it,  in  the  love  of  it, 
when  young,  will  find  in  its  exercise  a  happy  escapade  in  sea- 
sons of  boisterous  mirth,  and  thus  increase  the  joy ;  in  times 
of  despondency,  its  expression  will  give  encouragement; 
when  difficulties  oppose,  it  will  inspire  strength  to  overcome 
them,  and  when  clouds  of  trouble  gather  around  and  above, 
hedging  up  the  future,  shutting  out  the  blue  sky  of  life,  music 
can  penetrate  even  Egyptian  darkness,  and  let  in  upon  the 
almost  broken  heart  the  sunshine  of  hope,  of  gladness,  and  of 

joy- 
it  is  because  of  this  view  of  the  health-giving,  happifying, 

and  refining  influences  of  music,  that,  in  the  progress  of  a 
high  civilization,  its  cultivation  has  become  a  profession,  not 
only  among  those  who  give  utterance  to  it  in  vocal  sympho- 
nies, "  almost  divine/'  but  among  all  classes. 


THE   SABBATH  REST. 

No  one  muscle  of  the  body,  no  one  set  of  muscles,  can  be 
continuously  used,  without  an  eventual  paralysis,  or  total  loss 
of  power,  until  restored  by  rest.  But  if  one  class  of  muscles 
be  employed  for  a  time,  then  another,  while  the  former  is  at 
rest,  the  two,  thus  alternating,  may  be  kept  in  motion  without 


592  THE  SABBATH  REST. 

the  slightest  fatigue,  for  hours  together.  A  child  may  even 
cry  with  the  weariness  from  walking;  but  present  him  sud- 
denly with  a  beautiful  little  wagon,  and  allow  him  to  take  hold 
of  it  and  draw  a  companion  over  a  smooth  road,  the  offer  will 
be  accepted  with  alacrity,  and  the  amusement  will  continue, 
for  a  time,  equal  to  the  walk,  without  any  complaint  of  being 
tired ;  on  the  contrary,  there  will  be  a  freshness  of  action, 
new  and  delightful.  Many  a  traveller  has  rested  himself  from 
riding  on  horseback,  or  in  a  carriage,  by  alighting  and  walking 
a  mile  or  more,  simply  because  a  different  combination  of  mus- 
cular action  is  brought  into  play  ;  either  a  new  set  of  muscles, 
or  an  action  of  the  old  ones  in  a  different  direction,  —  all  going 
to  show  that  the  muscular  system,  the  whole  body,  will  have 
rest,  or  must  prematurely  perish.  Precisely  alike  is  the  law 
of  the  mind,  whose  faculties  are  various.  A  man  who  thinks 
intently  upon  a  single  subject  becomes  incapable,  at  length, 
of  concentrating  his  thoughts  upon  that  subject  to  advantage, 
and  instinctively  lays  down  his  book,  his  model,  or  his  pen,  to 
take  a  walk.  It  is  an  observed  fact,  that  a  large  number  of 
professed  students  of  prophecy  become  deranged ;  the  world 
is  full  of  monomaniacs,  of  persons  who  have  so  persistently 
thought  of  a  single  subject,. that  the  mind  has  become  perma- 
nently w  unhinged "  in  regard  to  it.  The  attention  of  the 
French  government  has  lately  been  drawn  to  the  alarming  fact, 
that  "  one  in  every  ten  of  the  scientific  branches  of  the  army 
finishes  his  course  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  in  consequence  of  the 
severe  attention  to  mathematical  training."  The  rector  of  the 
training  college  of  Glasgow  says,  from  long  and  extensive  ob- 
servation, he  "  will  undertake  to  teach  a  hundred  children,  in 
three  hours  a  day,  as  much  as  they  can  possibly  receive ; " 
that  is,  when  a  child  has  been  kept  at  study  three  hours,  its 
brain  becomes  incapable  of  pursuing  it  further,  advantageously, 
until  rested.  These  things  show  that,  unless  mind  and  body 
both  have  rest,  both  will  be  destroyed ;  and  to  save  both,  Di- 
vine wisdom  issued  the  precept  "  in  the  beginning,"  "  On  the 
seventh  day  thou  shalt  rest."  It  was  no  arbitrary  command ; 
it  was  an  injunction  fraught  with  wisdom  and  benevolence ; 
and  in  this  sense  was  it  that "  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man ;  " 
made  to  save  his  body  from  premature  wearing  out,  and  his 
mind  from  fatuity,  by  diverting  it  for  one  seventh  of  the  time 
from  its  ordinary  studies  and  affections,  and  fixing  it  on  a  totally 


BACK-BONE.  593 

different  class ;  taking  it  away  from  the  wasting,  wearing  harass- 
ments,  and  jarrings,  and  anxieties  of  business,  to  employ  it  in 
the  contemplation  and  worship  of  Divinity,  to  soothe,  to  elevate, 
and  sanctify ;  compelling  us  to  exclaim  in  affectionate  admira- 
tion, not  only  as  to  the  laws  of  our  physical,  but  as  to  those  of 
our  moral  nature,  K  In  loving-kindness  hast  Thou  made  them 
all ! "  The  observation  of  the  laborer  and  the  business  man 
will  testify  to  the  exhaustion  which  Saturday  night  always 
brings,  and  to  the  renewed  alacrity  with  which  business  is 
hurried  to  on  Monday  mornings.  The  reflecting  know  that, 
without  the  compulsory  observance  of  the  Sabbath-day,  multi- 
tudes of  helpless  slaves,  of  defenceless  apprentices,  of  depend- 
ent employe's,  the  uncomplaining  horse,  and  ox,  and  mule, 
would  be  driven  to  death.  Who  can  deny,  after  this,  that  the 
Bible  Christianity  is  the  poor  man's  friend?  And  yet  how 
many  malign  that  blessed  book,  and  wage  a  relentless  and  life- 
long war  against  that  religion  1 


BACK-BONE. 

As  light  as  one  feather  is,  it  will  soon  become  completely 
flattened,  if  a  thousand  other  feathers  are  piled  upon  it.  But 
when  a  living  substance  is  steadily  compressed,  it  is  destroyed, 
it  is  "  absorbed,"  in  medical  language,  and  disappears.  If  a 
bandage  is  strapped  around  the  stoutest  arm,  the  parts  under 
it  will  be  reduced  to  skin  and  bone  in  a  few  days,  if  the  band- 
age is  gradually  tightened ;  and  that,  too,  without  causing  any 
special  inconvenience.  The  back-bone  —  the  spinal  column  — 
is  composed  of  twenty-four  alternate  layers  of  hard  bone,  and  a 
kind  of  gristle,  which  is  soft,  pliant,  and  compressible,  like  so 
much  India-rubber,  between  each  two  bones.  In  the  ordinary 
work  of  a  day,  the  whole  weight  of  the  erect  body,  pressing  upon 
these  elastic  cushions,  compresses  them  to  the  extent,  that  a 
good-sized  man  will  be  half  an  inch  shorter  at  bedtime  than  he 
was  on  first  rising  in  the  morning.  But  if  a  person  gets  into 
the  habit  of  leaning  to  one  side,  as  some  do,  by  carrying  one 
shoulder  higher  than  the  other,  or  from  want  of  energy  to  sit, 
and  stand,  and  move  erectly,  or  from  actual  bodily  debility,— 
from  either  of  these  causes,  the  pressure  on  the  elastic  cush- 


594  BACK-BONE. 

ions  —  the  India-rubber  plates  between  the  spinal  bones — will 
not  only  tend  to  make  the  side  of  the  cushion  towards  which 
there  is  the  leaning  thinner,  by  means  of  the  greater  weight, 
but  also,  by  the  law  of  pressure  and  absorption,  thinner ;  that 
is,  the  whole  cushion  will  be  wedge-like,  the  thinner  part  of 
the  wedge  being  on  the  side  to  which  there  is  the  leaning.  If 
this  leaning  is  kept  up  too  long,  the  whole  cushion  will  be  ab- 
sorbed, the  bones  themselves  will  begin  to  touch,  and  be  ab- 
sorbed also.  This  is  spinal  disease.  If  the  cure  is  attempted 
before  the  bones  touch,  before  all  the  elastic  cushion  has  been 
removed  by  absorption,  it  may  be  effected ;  but  when  attention 
to  the  subject  has  been  delayed  until  the  bones  meet,  then  a 
cure  is  hopeless.  The  principle  of  cure,  in  curable  cases,  is  to 
relieve  the  pressure,  by  bending  over  on  the  other  side,  thus 
allowing  the  cushion  to  rebound  by  force  of  its  inherent  elas- 
ticity ;  and,  as  this  bending  on  the  other  side  promotes  absorp- 
tion there,  promotes  the  thinning  process,  while  the  opposite 
side  gets  thicker  by  its  rebound,  the  equilibrium  is  soon  re- 
stored, although  the  patient  may  not  be  quite  so  tall  as  before. 
The  obvious  practical  inference  is,  that  a  perfect  preventive 
of  spinal  deformity  of  this  nature  is  an  habitual  erect  position. 
But,  to  make  this  an  easy  and  practicable  thing,  an  active  life 
must  be  commenced;  the  person  should  be  constantly  on 
horseback  or  on  foot,  walking  or  working,  for  then  an  erect 
position  may  be  maintained  without  weariness ;  but  to  endeav- 
or to  maintain  it  while  at  rest,  in  sitting,  reading,  writing,  or 
sewing,  is  an  unendurable  weariness,  or  an  impossibility. 
Walking  with  the  head  downward,  or  with  a  staff  or  cane,  pro- 
motes a  stooping  position,  and  brings  on  an  appearance  of  old 
age  prematurely,  not  only  by  the  effects  upon  the  structure  of 
the  spinal  column,  but  by  throwing  the  weight  of  the  body  on 
the  chest,  thus  compressing  the  lungs,  diminishing  their  capa- 
bility of  receiving  an  adequate  quantity  of  pure  air,  thus 
gradually  purifying  the  blood  less  and  less  perfectly,  until  the 
whole  mass  of  it  becomes  imperfect,  impure,  and  diseased; 
then  slight  causes  carry  a  man  to  the  grave.  An  absolute 
preventive  of  all  this  is  an  habitual,  persistent  attention  to  the 
following  rules :  — 

1.  Walk  with  the  toes  thrown  outward. 

2.  Walk  with  the  chin  slightly  above  a  horizontal  line,  as  if 


REARING   CHILDREN.  595 

looking  at  the  top  of  a  man's  hat  in  front  of  you,  or  at  the 
eaves  or  roof  of  a  house. 

3.  Walk  a  good  deal  with  your  hands  behind  you. 

4.  Sit  with  the  lower  portion  of  the  spine  pressed  against 
the  chair-back. 


REARING  CHILDREN. 

1.  ON  entering  the  fourth  year,  children  should  not  be  al- 
lowed to  eat  oftener  than  once  in  four  hours,  but  always  in 
peace  and  cheerfulness. 

2.  Do  not  send  a  child  to  school,  nor  allow  him  to  learn  at 
home  anything  more  than  the  alphabet,  nor  commit  anything 
to  memory,  except  the  Lord's  prayer,  and  a  half  dozen  short, 
simple,  religious  hymns,  until  the  sixth  year  is  completed,  un- 
less the  child  will  have  to  "  do  something  for  a  living "  very 
early. 

3.  Allow  nothing  whatever  to  be  eaten  within  two  hours  of 
bedtime. 

4.  The  last  meal  of  the  day  should  be  of  cold  bread  and 
butter,  with  some  mild,  warm  drink,  —  say  milk   and  water, 
half  and  half,  sweetened,  called  "  cambric  tea,"  or  a  bowl  of 
bread  and  milk,  or  mush  and  milk,  made  of  Indian  (corn)  or 
oatmeal.     "  Preserves,"  cake,  or  other  sweetmeats,  are  most 
pernicious. 

5.  Children  should   sleep  in  separate  beds,  on  a  straw  or 
hair  mattress,  without  caps,  being  careful  to  have  the  feet  well 
warmed  by  the  fire,  stockings  off;  or,  if  in  summer,  rubbed 
dry  with  the  hand,  washing  them  every  other  night.     Have 
extra  covering  on  the  feet  in  cold  weather. 

6.  Encourage  them  in  every  way,   compel  them,  if  neces- 
sary, to  be  out  of  doors,  or  in  a  large,  clean,  open,  dry,  cheer- 
ful room,  for  the  greater  part  of  daylight  between  breakfast 
and  sundown.     If  the  weather  is  damp  or  raw,  especially  at 
the   close  of  the  day,  keep  them  indoors.     In  late   autumn, 
winter,  and  early  spring,  a  child  under  ten  ought  not  to  be  out 
later  than  an  hour  before  sundown,  except  in  constant,  active 
motion  ;  nine  tenths  of  the  cases  of  croup  would  be  thus  pre- 
vented. 


596        .  BEARING   CHILDREN. 

7.  If  a  child  eats  at  regular  hours,  do  not  limit  it,  except  at 
supper-time. 

8.  By  all  means  let  the  child  take  the  fullest  amount  of 
sleep.     Never  wake  up  a  child,  except  in  a  day  nap  ;  but  be  par- 
ticular to  have  it  go  to  bed  at  so  early  an  hour  regularly,  that 
it  shall  wake  up  of  itself  in  full  time  to  dress  for  breakfast. 
Children  left  to  themselves,  are  never  ready  to  go  to  bed,  or 
to  get  up,  in  time. 

9.  Avoid  the  barbarism  of  keeping  your  child  still,  as  long 
as  it  is  doing  no  injury  to  property,  person,  or  good  morals. 
Motion  of  some  sort  is  a  physical  necessity  to  young  children ; 
it  is  an   unappeasable  instinct.     To  repress  it,  by  arbitrary 
commands,  is  a  rebellion  against  nature,  and  a  cruelty  to  the 
child. 

10.  Never  threaten  a  child.     It  is  cruel,  unjust,  and  danger- 
ous.    What  you  have  to  do,  do  it,  and  there  make  an  end ;  but 
act   deliberately,   firmly,  kindly,  maintaining   your   own  self- 
respect. 

11.  Never  reprove  a  child  in  the  presence  of  any  third  party ; 
its  self-esteem  is  wounded  thereby,  and  a  spirit  of  self-defence, 
of  opposition,  or  even  defiance,  is  engendered. 

12.  NeveV  make  a  positive  promise  to  a  child,  unless  you 
are  perfectly  certain  you  will  be  able  to  fulfil  it. 

13.  Always  give  your  child  an  affectionate  greeting  on  com- 
ing home,  even  after  a  few  hours'  absence.     It  might  have 
been  brought  to  your  door  a  corpse  ! 

14.  The  most  certain  and  most  speedy  method  of  ruining  a 
child  is  to  be  forever  laying  down  rules,  regulations,  and  re- 
strictions.    At  the  earliest  possible  moment  it  will  break  away 
from  all  restraint. 

15.  Let  nothing  ever  prevent  you  from  sending  your  chilcf 
to  bed  in  a  calm,  and  loving,  and  grateful  frame  of  mind.     It 
or  you  may  die  before  the  morning. 

16.  Be  yourself  all  that  you  would  have  your  child  to  be. 


PAIN.  597 


PAIN. 

PAIN  is  a  blessing,  being  Nature's  admonition  that  something 
is  wrong,  and  impels  to  its  rectification.  If,  for  example,  there 
were  no  feeling  in  the  fingers  or  feet,  they  might  any  night  be 
frozen  or  burnt  off,  and  we  would  wake  in  the  morning  to  a 
life-long  deformity. 

The  immediate  cause  of  all  pain  is  in  the  condition  of  the 
blood  acting  on  the  nerves,  it  being  too  thick,  too  abundant, 
or  too  poor.  If  too  poor,  it  must  be  enriched  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  iron  into  the  system.  When  too  abundant,  it  must  be 
lessened  in  quantity  by  working  it  off  in  exercise,  and  by 
diminishing  its  supply,  which  is  furnished  by  the  food  eaten. 
When  too  thick,  which  is  the  same  as  being  impure,  it  must  be 
remedied  by  a  large  and  daily  exposure  to  the  fresh,  pure,  out- 
door air,  because  every  breath  goes  in  pure,  and  as  it  were 
empty,  but  comes  out  loaded  with  impurity.  Hence  animals, 
being  out  of  doors  all  the  time,  remain  still,  and,  without  ex- 
ercise, get  well,  because,  breathing  a  pure  air,  every  breath  is 
directly  remedial. 

The  more  fixed  and  severe  a  pain  is,  the  more  dangerous  it 
is,  as  it  will  soon  cause  destruction  of  the  parts.  When  pain 
is  shifting,  it  is  only  functional,  and  arises  merely  from  a  sur- 
plus of  blood  in  the  veins  or  arteries  pressing  against  the 
nerves  of  the  part.  In  some  cases,  accumulations  of  wind  or 
gases  cause  pain.  Pain  being  the  result  of  too  much  blood  in 
a  part,  as  a  very  general  rule,  the  remedy,  in  severe  and 
pressing  cases,  is  to  apply  a  mustard-plaster  near  that  part, 
which  draws  the  blood  away,  as  is  seen  by  the  reddening  of 
the  skin. 

The  most  agonizing  pains  are  often  removed  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye,  by  dipping  a  bit  of  cloth  (woollen,  flannel,  or  cot- 
ton) in  a  mixture  of  equal  parts  of  sweet  oil,  chloroform,  and 
strong  spirits  of  hartshorn,  just  shaken  together,  and  spread 
over  the  spot,  with  a  handkerchief  wadded  in  the  hand,  and 
held  over  the  cloth  so  as  to  retain  the  more  volatile  ingredi- 
ents ;  to  be  removed  the  moment  the  pain  ceases. 

The  safest  and  most  comfortable  application  in  nature  for 
the  relief  of  all  pain,  especially  that  arising  from  inflamma- 


598  VACCINATION. 

tion,  is  a  woollen  cloth  kept  very  warm,  even  hot,  by  the 
steady  addition  of  hot  water,  or  a  stream  of  warm  water,  where 
the  painful  part  admits  it.  When  pain  is  severe,  sharp,  or 
thrilling,  there  is  inflammation,  and  it  arises  from  there  being 
too  much  blood  in  the  arteries ;  if  dull  and  heavy,  it  is  caused 
from  there  being  too  much  blood  in  the  veins. 

The  pain  of  inflammation  gives  heat ;  hence  headache,  with 
a  hot  head,  is  from  too  much  blood  in  the  arteries,  and  there  is 
throbbing ;  draw  it  away  by  putting  the  feet  in  very  hot 
water ;  this  often  removes  pain  in  any  part  of  the  body  above 
the  ankles. 

When  there  is  too  much  blood  in  the  veins  of  the  head,  there 
is  a  dull  pain  or  great  depression  of  spirits,  and  the  feet  are 
always  cold.  It  is  this  excess  of  blood  in  the  veins  of  the 
head  or  brain,  which  always  induces  the  despondency  which  so 
frequently  causes  suicide.  When  this  is  attempted  by  cutting 
the  throat,  the  relief  is  instantaneous,  and  the  victim  becomes 
anxious  for  the  life  he  had  just  attempted  to  destroy.  Hence, 
a  good  out-door  walk,  or  a  hot  bath,  a  sudden  fit  of  laughter, 
or  a  terrible  burst  of  passion,  by  dispersing  the  blood  to  the 
surface  from  the  centres,  puts  the  blues  and  megrims  to  flight 
also. 


VACCINATION. 

IN  round  numbers  and  familiar  fractions,  of  seventy  thousand 
Prussian  soldiers  vaccinated  or  re-vaccinated  during  1860, 
fifty  thousand  were  successful  —  namely,  "  took."  Out  of  this 
whole  number  there  was  not  a  single  case  of  small-pox,  and 
only  one  of  varioloid,  showing  what  a  perfect  protection  against 
small-pox  effectual  vaccination  is ;  but  as  three  out  of  four 
"took"  after  having  been  re-vaccinated,  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  these  might  have  taken  varioloid  or  small-pox  if 
they  had  been  very  directly  exposed  to  it.  As  confinement  to 
the  house  in  winter  makes  "  catching"  diseases  more  dangerous, 
and  as  the  virtue  of  the  vaccination  of  childhood  and  infancy 
seems  to  be  exhausted  in  many  cases  at  puberty,  parents  who 
are  wise  will  therefore  promptly  have  every  child  vaccinated 
the  second  time  on  entering  the  fourteenth  year,  especially  as 
it  causes  very  little  constitutional  disturbance.  The  family 


HOUSEKEEPING  HINTS.  599 

physician  should  be  applied  to,  to  use  every  effort  to  secure 
healthy  vaccine  matter.  It  would  be  humanity  to  make  it  an 
indispensable  condition  of  admission  into  a  public  school  to 
have  a  distinct  vaccine  mark  on  all  under  fourteen,  and  a  cer- 
tificate of  re-vaccination  as  to  all  who  have  entered  their 
fourteenth  year. 

VACCINATION  OP  INFANTS,  within  a  few  days  after  birth,  has 
been  attended  with  accidents  more  or  less  serious,  and  some- 
times fatal ;  and  as  small-pox  is  very  rare  in  children  under  six 
months  of  age,  it  is  best,  in  the  case  of  private  families,  to 
defer  the  operation  until  the  third  month,  except  as  to  children 
in  hospitals,  or  in  other  particularly  exposed  circumstances. 
Special  efforts  should  be  used  to  secure  proper  vaccine  matter. 

1.  Take  the  lymph  from  a  child  not  less  than  five  months  old. 

2.  The  child's  parents  should  be  healthy. 

3.  The  lymph  should  be  taken  previous  to  the  ninth  day  of 
the  existence  of  the  vesicle. 

4.  Take  no  blood  with  the  matter. 

5.  Never  vaccinate  over  a  dozen  with  the  same  supply,  for 
fear  it  may  have  been  from  a  diseased  subject. 


HOUSEKEEPING  HINTS. 

HEALTH  is  impaired,  and  even  life  lost  sometimes,  by  using 
imperfect,  unripe,  musty,  or  decaying  articles  of  food.  The 
same  money's  worth  of  a  smaller  amount  of  good  is  more  nutri- 
tious, more  healthful,  and  more  invigorating,  than  a  much 
larger  amount  of  what  is  of  an  inferior  quality.  Therefore, 
get  good  food,  and  keep  it  good  until  used.  Remember  that 

Fresh  meats  should  be  kept  in  a  cool  place,  but  not  freezing, 
or  in  actual  contact  with  ice. 

Flour  and  meal  should  be  kept  in  a  cool,  dry  place,  with  a 
space  of  an  inch  or  more  between  the  floor  and  the  bottom  of 
the  barrel. 

SUGARS.  —  Havana  sugar  is  seldom  clean  ;  hence,  not  so  good 
as  that  from  Brazil,  Porto  Rico,  and  Santa  Cruz.  Loaf,  crushed, 
and  granulated  sugars  have  most  sweetness,  and  go  further 
than  brown. 

Butter,  for  winter  use,  should  be  made  in  mid-autumn. 


600  HOUSEKEEPING  HINTS. 

Lard  that  is  hard  and  white,  and  from  hogs  tinder  a  year  old, 
is  best. 

Cheese  soft  between  fingers  is  richest  and  best.  Keep  it 
tied  in  a  bag  hung  in  a  cool,  dry  place.  Wipe  off  the  mould 
with  a  dry  cloth. 

Rice,  large,  clean,  and  fresh-looking,  is  best. 

Sago,  small  and  white,  called  "  Pearl,"  is  best. 

Coffee  and  tea  should  be  kept  in  close  canisters,  and  by 
themselves.  Purchase  the  former  green  ;  roast  and  grind  for 
each  day's  use. 

Apples,  oranges,  and  lemons  keep  longest  wrapped  close  in 
paper,  and  kept  in  a  cool,  dry  place.  Thaw  frozen  apples  in 
cold  water. 

Bread  and  cake  should  be  kept  in  a  dry,  cool  place,  in  a 
wooden  box,  aired  in  the  sun  every  day  or  two. 

All  strong-odored  food  should  be  kept  by  itself,  where  it 
cannot  scent  the  house. 

Bar  soap  should  be  piled  up,  with  spaces  between  them,  in 
a  dry  cellar,  having  the  air  all  around  it  to  dry  it  for  months 
before  using ;  the  drier,  the  less  waste. 

Cranberries  kept  covered  with  water  will  keep  for  months 
in  a  cellar. 

Potatoes  spread  over  a  dry  floor  will  not  sprout.  If  they 
do,  cut  off  the  sprouts  often.  If  frozen,  thaw  them  in  hot  wa- 
ter, and  cook  at  once.  By  peeling  off  the  skin  after  they  are 
cooked,  the  most  nutritious  and  healthful  part  is  saved. 

Corned  beef  should  be  put  in  boiling  water,  and  boil  steadily 
for  several  hours. 

Hominy,  or  K  samp,"  should  steep  in  warm  water  all  night, 
and  boil  all  next  day  in  an  earthen  jar,  surrounded  with  water. 

Spices  and  peppers  should  be  ground  fine,  and  kept  in  tin 
cans  in  a  dry  place.  A  good  nutmeg  "  bleeds  "  at  the  puncture 
of  a  pin.  Cayenne  pepper  is  better  for  all  purposes  of  health 
than  black. 

Beans,  white,  are  the  cheapest  and  most  nutritious  of  all  ar- 
ticles of  food  in  this  country.  The  best  mealy  potatoes  sink 
in  strong  salt  water. 

Hot  drinks  are  best  at  meals ;  the  less  of  any  fluid  the  better. 
Anything  cold  arrests  digestion  on  the  instant. 

It  is  hurtful,  and  is  a  wicked  waste  of  food,  to  eat  without 
an  appetite. 


DURATION  OF  LIFE.  601 

All  meats  should  be  cut  up  as  fine  as  a  pea,  most  especially 
for  children.  The  same  amount  of  stomach-power  expended 
on  such  a  small  amount  of  food,  as  to  be  digested  perfectly 
without  its  being  felt  to  be  a  labor,  namely,  without  any  ap- 
preciable discomfort  in  any  part  of  the  body,  gives  more  nu- 
triment, strength,  and  vigor  to  the  system,  than  upon  a  larger 
amount,  which  is  felt  to  require  an  effort,  giving  nausea,  ful- 
ness, acidity,  wind,  etc. 

Milk,  however  fresh,  pure,  and  rich,  if  drunk  largely  at  each 
meal,  —  say  a  glass  or  two,  —  is  generally  hurtful  to  invalids 
and  sedentary  persons,  as  it  tends  to  cause  fever,  constipation, 
or  biliousness. 


DURATION  OF    LIFE. 

THE  average  duration  of  life  of  man  in  civilized  society  is 
about  thirty-three  and  a  third  years.  This  is  called  a  gen- 
eration, making  three  in  a  century.  But  there  are  certain  lo- 
calities, and  certain  communities  of  people,  where  this  average 
is  considerably  extended.  The  mountaineer  lives  longer  than 
the  lowlander ;  the  farmer  than  the  artisan ;  the  traveller  than 
the  sedentary ;  the  temperate  than  the  self-indulgent ;  the  just 
than  the  dishonest.  "  The  wicked  shall  not  live  out  half  his 
days,"  is  the  announcement  of  Divinity.  The  philosophy  of 
this  is  found  in  the  fact,  that  the  moral  character  has  a  strong 
power  over  the  physical,  —  a  power  much  more  controlling 
than  is  generally  imagined.  The  true  man  conducts  himself 
in  the  light  of  Bible  precepts  ;  is  "  temperate  in  all  things ;  " 
is  w  slow  to  anger ; "  and  on  his  grave  is  written, "  he  went 
about  doing  good."  In  these  three  things  are  the  great  ele- 
ments of  human  health,  —  the  restraint  of  the  appetites,  the 
control  of  the  passions,  and  that  highest  type  of  physical  exer- 
cise, "  going  about  doing  good."  It  is  said  of  the  eminent 
Quaker  philanthropist,  Joseph  John  Gurney,  that  the  labor 
and  pains  he  took  to  go  and  see  personally  the  objects  of  his 
contemplated  charities,  so  that  none  of  then*  should  be  unwor- 
thily bestowed,  was,  of  itself,  almost  the  labor  of  one  man,  and 
he  attended  to  his  immense  banking  business  besides ;  in  fact, 
he  did  too  much,  and  died  at  sixty.  The  average  length  of  hu- 
man life  of  all  countries,  at  this  age  of  the  world,  is  about 


H02  DERATION  OF  LIFE. 

twenty-eight  years.  One  quarter  of  all  who  die  do  not  reach 
the  age  of  seven ;  one  half  die  before  reaching  seventeen  ; 
and  yet  the  average  of  life  of  "Friends,"  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  in  1860,  was  nearly  fifty-six  years, — just  double  the 
average  life  of  other  peoples.  Surely  this  is  a  strong  induce- 
ment for  all  to  practise  for  themselves,  and  to  inculcate  it  upon 
their  children  day  by  day,  that  simplicity  of  habit,  that  quiet- 
ness of  demeanor,  that  restraint  of  temper,  that  control  of  the 
appetites  and  propensities,  and  that  orderly,  systematic,  and 
even  mode  of  life,  which  Friends'  discipline  inculcates,  and 
which  are  demonstrably  the  means  of  so  largely  increasing  the 
average  of  human  existence. 

Reasoning  from  the  analogy  of  the  animal  creation,  mankind 
should  live  nearly  a  hundred  years ;  that  law  seeming  to  be, 
that  life  should  be  five  times  the  length  of  the  period  of 
growth ;  at  least,  the  general  observation  is,  that  the  longer 
persons  are  growing,  the  longer  they  live,  other  things  being 
equal.  Naturalists  say,  a  dog  grows  for  two  years,  and  lives 
eight ;  an  ox  for  four  years,  and  lives  sixteen  ;  a  horse  for  five 
years,  and  lives  twenty-five ;  a  camel  for  eight  years,  and  lives 
forty ;  man  for  twenty,  should  live  one  hundred.  But  the  sad 
fact  is,  that  only  one  man  for  every  thousand  reaches  one  hun- 
dred years.  Still  it  is  encouraging  to  know  that  the  science  of 
life,  as  revealed  by  the  investigations  of  the  physiologist, 
and  the  teachings  of  educated  medical  men,  are  steadily  ex- 
tending the  period  of  human  existence.  The  distinguished 
historian,  Macaulay,  states  that  in  1685,  one  person  in  twenty 
died  each  year;  in  1850,  out  of  forty  persons,  only  one  died. 
Dupin  says,  that  from  1776  to  1843  the  duration  of  life  in 
France  increased  fifty-two  days  annually,  for,  in  1781,  the  mor- 
tality was  one  in  twenty-nine  ;  in  1853,  one  in  forty.  The 
rich  men  in  France  live  forty -two  years  on  an  average ;  the 
poor  only  thirty.  Those  who  are  "  well  to  do  in  the  world  " 
live  about  eleven  years  longer  than  those  who  have  to  work 
from  day  to  day  for  a  living.  Remunerative  labor,  and  the 
diffusion  of  the. knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life  among  the  masses, 
with  temperance  and  thrift,  are  the  great  means  of  adding  to 
human  health  and  life ;  but  the  more  important  ingredient, 
happiness,  is  only  to  be  found  in  daily  loving,  obeying,  and 
serving  Him  "  who  giveth  us  all  things  richly  to  enjoy." 


SORES.  603 


SORES. 

SORES  are  accidental  or  spontaneous.  They  sometimes  heal 
readily  ;  at  others,  they  resist  all  known  remedies,  and  last  for 
months,  years,  and  even  to  the  close  of  life.  Many  persons 
appear  in  perfect  health,  and  yet,  on  inquiry,  it  will  be  found 
that  they  have  had  running  sores  on  some  part  of  the  body  for 
many  years.  If  a  person  is  in  good  health,  and  a  sore  is  made 
by  a  bruise,  scratch,  splinter,  or  otherwise,  it  will  heal  of  itself 
rapidly ;  but,  if  an  invalid,  or  if  of  a  feeble  constitution,  the 
sore  will  be  a  long  time  in  healing,  and  may  prove  very  trou- 
blesome. Persons  who  drink  alcoholic  liquors  have  very 
little  healing  power ;  and  a  slight  bruise,  or  abrasion  of  the 
skin,  will  be  weeks  and  months  in  getting  well.  The  men  who 
work  about  the  London  breweries  drink  large  quantities  of 
ale  and  beer  every  day,  and  when  they  get  to  be  forty  or  fifty 
years  old,  the  scratch  of  a  pin  sometimes  becomes  fatal ;  and 
very  slight  bruises  or  cuts  are  healed  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty. 

An  abrasion  of  the  skin,  where  there  is  but  little  flesh,  as  on 
the  shin,  very  often  becomes  a  running  sore  for  life,  because 
there  is  little  vitality  in  the  part.  A  gentleman  of  wealth,  in 
getting  into  his  carriage,  had  a  slip  of  the  foot,  and  the  fore 
part  of  the  leg  scraped  against  the  iron  door-step ;  it  inflamed, 
spread,  ulcerated ;  mortification  took  place,  and  he  died.  He 
drank  liquor  habitually.  The  healthiest  persons  should  care- 
fully protect  any  sore  on  the  fore  part  of  the  leg  from  being 
rubbed  by  the  clothing.  Never  allow  the  "  scab  "  to  be  picked 
off;  let  it  fall  off  of  itself. 

Sores  sometimes  come  without  apparent  cause.  It  is  be- 
cause the  blood  is  bad,  is  in  a  diseased  condition,  and  nature 
is  making  an  effort  to  throw  it  out  of  the  system.  The  per- 
son is  apparently  well ;  has  a  good  appetite  ;  tries  this  thing, 
that,  and  the  other,  but  nothing  seems  to  do  any  good.  And 
nothing  will  do  any  good,  besides  keeping  it  clean  and  moist, 
until  nature  has  relieved  herself,  until  the  blood  has  "  run  it- 
self "  pure ;  and  then  the  sore  heals  without  any  agency. 
Very  often,  at  this  turning-point,  a  person  happens,  on  advice,  to 
smear  on  a  little  goose-grease,  or  other  inert  material,  and  the 


604  WHITLOW. 

sore  gets  well,  —  not  as  a  consequence,  but  as  a  coincidence, — 
and  thereafter,  until  life's  close,  goose-grease,  with  that  indi- 
vidual, becomes  a  famous  remedy,  is  "  good  for "  sores,  and 
everything  else.  The  sore,  in  such  cases,  has  prevented  an 
attack  of  fever  or  other  sickness.  On  the  appearance  of  any 
sore,  it  is  wise  to  begin  at  once,  and  eat  nothing  but  fruits  and 
coarse  bread ;  keep  the  body  clean,  and  exercise  more  freely 
in  the  open  air,  and  thus  aid  nature  in  working  off  the  offend- 
ing matters.  Life  is  often  lost  by  healing  up  a  running  sore 
rapidly.  It  should  never  be  done,  unless,  at  the  same  time, 
the  system  is  kept  free  by  the  use  of  laxative  food  or  medicine. 
Under  such  conditions,  the  most  incorrigible  scrofulous  sores 
may  be  soon  and  safely  healed,  thus :  First  wash  the  sore  well ; 
then  apply  with  a  brush  or  soft  rag,  twice  a  day,  the  follow- 
ing :  put  one  ounce  of  aqua-fortis  into  a  bowl  or  saucer ;  drop 
in  two  copper  cents ;  when  effervescence  ceases,  add  two 
ounces  of  strong  vinegar.  If  it  smarts  too  severely,  add  a 
little  rain  water. 


WHITLOW. 

IT  is  sufficiently  near  the  truth  for  general  practical  pur- 
poses to  say,  that  a  real,  genuine  "  whitlow  "  is  a  w  boil,"  low 
down,  next  the  bone,  under  the  "  whit-leather,"  -—  shall  we  say 
a  boil  under  the  white-leather,  as  the  origin  of  the  name? 
This  ailment  is  generally  at  the  ends  of  the  fingers,  inside, 
and  is  usually  caused  by  pricks,  bruises,  and  burns,  but  not 
always ;  for  it  has  sometimes  gone  through  whole  neighbor- 
hoods, like  measles,  mumps,  or  cholera,  and  prevails  more  in 
winter  and  cold  latitudes.  If  it  is  above  the  whit-leather  or 
fascia,  a  whitlow  causes  comparatively  little  suffering ;  but 
most  to  those  who,  by  hard  work,  keep  the  skin  of  the  palm 
and  fingers  hard,  thus  making  it  more  difficult  for  the  boil  to 
break  ;  that  is,  more  difficult  for  the  matter  to  make  an  opening, 
and  escape  from  the  system.  These  get  well  of  themselves, 
without  leaving  any  permanently  ill  effects,  if  the  system  is 
kept  free,  if  the  part  is  kept  moist  and  warm,  and  nothing  is 
eaten  for  a  few  days  but  bread  and  water,  fruits,  and  gruels  or 
soups.  But  real  whitlows,  namely,  where  the  boil  is  bdow  the 
white  or  whit  leather  (fascia),  become  a  perfect  and  unen- 


THE  MORNING  PBAYER.  605 

durable  torture,  and  often  cause  the  decay  of  the  bone,  or  the 
permanent  loss  of  the  use  of  the  finger.  To  prevent  this,  and 
to  give  instantaneous,  permanent,  and  safe  relief,  there  is  only 
one  method  which  never  fails.  Get  a  physician  to  cut  down 
to  the  bone,  first  in  one  direction  and  then  another,  making  a 
cross,  the  object  being  to  let  out  the  pent-up  matter,  just  as  a 
common  boil  ceases  to  pain  as  soon  as  the  skin  is  broken  and 
the  matter  is  let  out.  The  matter  of  whitlow  is  more  perfectly 
emptied  out,  if,  after  this  "  crucial  incision/'  the  part  is  held  in 
warm  water  for  half  an  hour  or  more,  and  is  then  kept  moist 
and  warm  by  any  sort  of  poultice ;  and  that  material  is  best 
which  keeps  moist  the  longest.  There  are  multitudes  of 
"  remedies "  for  whitfbw  in  the  newspapers,  every  one  of 
which,  for  real  whitlow,  is  fallacious  or  impossible,  —  that,  for 
example,  of  tying  a  cord  around  the  finger  "  to  starve  it  to 
death,"  by  cutting  off  the  supply  of  blood,  just  about  equal  to 
a  tooth-drawing  operation  protracted  during  twenty-four  hours. 
There  is  nearly  always  constipation,  and  the  greater  the  con- 
stipation the  greater  the  agony  of  a  real  whitlow  ;  hence  this 
should  always  be  removed  by  injections,  or,  better  still,  by  the 
free  use  of  coarse  breads,  and  fruits,  and  berries,  in  any  and 
every  shape  or  form.  The  spot  of  a  superficial  whitlow  or 
boil  soon  begins  to  turn  yellow;  but  in  the  deep-seated  or 
only  real  whitlow,  after  days  and  nights  of  intense  pain  and 
violent  throbbing  of  the  part,  there  is  no  yellowness,  the  skin 
is  merely  swollen  or  red ;  besides,  the  pain  of  a  real  whitlow 
seems  to  be  down  to  the  bone  itself,  deep-seated,  and  not  near 
the  surface. 


THE  MORNING  PRAYER. 

THE  humble  and  consistent  looking  upward  for  the  gratifica- 
tion of  our  desires,  the  satisfaction  of  our  wants,  and  that  aid 
which  comes  from  above  to  enable  us  to  perform  properly  all 
the  duties  of  life,  is  a  religious  obligation.  But  Providence 
has  so  arranged  matters,  that  the  performance  of  our  duties 
may  bring  great  benefits  along  with  it.  Many  of  the  "  observ- 
ances "  which  Moses  imposed  upon  the  Israelites,  tended 
directly  to  the  promotion  of  human  health,  of  physical  well- 
being.  Mouldy,  spotted  houses,  damp  and  disease-engender- 


THE   MORNING  PRAYER. 

ing,  were  to  be  pulled  down,  and  their  materials  scattered  or 
burned  ;  frequent  personal  ablutions  were  insisted  on,  thereby 
promoting  individual  healthfulness ;  while  the  use  of  rank 
meats,  and  other  articles  of  food  unsuited  to  that  climate,  was 
most  specifically  prohibited.  The  disuse  of  all  flesh  for  a 
month  or  more,  in  the  spring  of  the  year,  in  some  religious  de- 
nominations, is  the  dictate  of  a  sound  physiology,  and  is  not 
only  promotive  of  health,  but  is  antagonistic  of  disease ;  and  if 
it  were  wisely  carried  out  for  "forty  days,"  every  spring, 
would  demonstrably  prevent  many  an  attack  of  sickness,  and 
would  extend  many  a  valuable  life.  Numerous  spring  dis- 
eases are  directly  traceable  to  the  undisputed  physiological 
fact,  that,  as  the  warm  weather  approaches,  we  need  one  third 
less  food ;  and  sickness  is  inevitable  when  as  much  is  eaten  in 
warm  weather  as  in  cold.  A  judiciously  observed  "  fast "  is 
as  promotive  of  physical  as  of  spiritual  health.  There  is  wis- 
dom and  piety  in  the  early  morning  prayers  of  some  churches ; 
and  there  is  health  in  them,  too  !  A  multitude  of  moral,  social, 
and  physical  good  effects  would  follow,  if,  in  all  large  towns 
and  cities,  fifteen  minutes  were  spent  in  singing  and  prayer 
in  every  house  of  worship,  at  some  convenient  early  hour. 
Ten  verses  might  be  read,  three  or  four  stanzas  of  some  fa- 
miliar hymn  sung,  and  a  short,  pertinent  prayer  offered  by 
the  clergyman,  some  of  his  officers,  or  other  active  Christian 
men,  to  commence  at  the  moment,  and  end  with  the  fifteen 
minutes,  by  the  stroke  of  a  bell.  The  merchant,  on  his  way 
to  his  store  ;  the  lawyer,  to  his  office  ;  the  workman,  to  his 
shop;  the  banker,  to  his  desk, —  all  could  easily  arrange  to 
stop  in,  and  carry  on  with  them  a  sanctifying  influence,  to  im- 
pregnate all  the  after  business  transactions  of  the  day.  The 
son  or  daughter,  on  their  way  to  school,  could  accompany  their 
father ;  and  a  walk,  on  such  a  mission,  to  the  mother,  or  grown 
daughter  and  son,  soon  after  breakfast,  how  it  would  break  up 
the  "  second  naps  "  of  the  morning,  and  that  lazy,  late  lounging 
in  bed,  which  saps  the  health,  and  vitiates  the  habits  of  BO 
many  of  the  young  of  cities.  Such  a  plan  would  waken  up 
early  activities,  by  presenting  an  object  for  the  same ;  would 
infuse  a  new  life  into  our  morning  existence,  and  give  many 
an  hour  of  outdoor  exercise  to  our  wives  and  daughters,  for 
want  of  which  many  of  them  prematurely  pine  away  and  die. 
Such  meetings  would  create  a  neighborly  feeling  among  the 


THE  DEAF  HEAR.  607 

members  of  many  congregations;  would  promote  unity,  and 
love,  and  cooperation  in  building  up  the  interests  of  the 
Church ;  would  bring  the  members  nearer  together,  and  would 
be  a  bond  of  social  and  Christian  union  of  incalculable  value  > 
besides  the  hygienic  advantages  already  stated. 

The  ready  plea  of  want  of  time  is  not  valid.  There  is  not  a 
man  in  the  country  who  could  not  save  fifteen  minutes  from 
any  day's  work,  and  give  it  to  the  morning  prayer-meeting. 
As  for  our  wives  and  grown  daughters,  many  ot  them  are 
literally  dying  off  in-doors,  for  want  of  an  adequate  induce- 
ment to  dress  and  go  out  in  the  open  air,  pleasantly,  for  an 
hour  or  two  a  day.  Such  an  expenditure  of  time  daily,  sys- 
tematically, would  add  years  to  the  life  of  some,  and  save 
others  from  weary  weeks  and  months  of  worse  than  idleness 
on  beds  of  avoidable  sickness,  because  they  not  only  lose  their 
own  time,  but  require  that  of  others  to  attend  them,  besides 
deranging  the  movements  of  the  whole  household. 


THE  DEAF  HEAR. 

SOME  become  deaf  in  very  early  life,  in  consequence  of  an 
unfavorable  recovery  from  scarlet  fever,  measles,  mumps,  and 
other  ailments,  such  as  cold  in  the  ears,  or  by  the  violent 
straining  of  vomiting.  Others  grow  deaf  as  a  consequence  of 
increasing  age.  In  all  these  the  deafness  grows  with  advan- 
cing years.  A  great  multitude  of  remedies  have  been  tried  for 
the  removal  or  mitigation  of  this  calamity ;  but,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  such  cases  as  are  the  result  of  "  hardened  wax,"  the 
writer  has  never  known  any  material  benefit  to  have  been  de- 
rived in  a  single  instance,  either  by  medicines  or  external 
appliances.  The  successful  cases  were  the  result  of  moist, 
bland  applications,  of  which  glycerine  is  the  best,  from  the 
quality  which  it  possesses  of  remaining  moist  longer  than  any 
other  known  substance.  Let  fall  two  or  three  drops  in  the 
ailing  ear,  then  introduce  a  bit  of  lint  or  cotton  saturated  with 
it.  If,  by  repeating  this  operation  night  and  morning,  for  some 
weeks,  there  is  no  relief,  it  may  be  considered  a  remediless  in- 
firmity. But  the  increase  of  the  deafness  will  be  considerably 
retarded  by  using  all  possible  means  to  keep  up  the  general 


608  THE  DEAF -HEAR. 

health,  by  regular  bodily  habits,  by  personal  cleanliness,  by  a 
temperate  life,  and  by  arranging  to  spend  several  hours  of  each 
day  in  the  open  air,  in  some  enlivening  and  agreeable  manner. 
Artificial  aids  have  sometimes  been  called  into  requisition, 
such  as  ear-trumpets  and  auricles,  which  never  fail  to  deepen 
the  deafness,  and  that  rapidly.  It  is,  therefore,  wisest  and 
best  for  one  who  hears  with  difficulty,  — 

1.  To  apply  glycerine,  night  and  morning,  for  months. 

2.  Maintain  a  high  state  of  general  health. 

3.  Steadily  resist  all  artificial  aids  for  the  ordinary  occasions 
of  life. 

4.  Never  allow  anything  stronger  than  sweet  oil,  tepid  wa- 
ter, or  glycerine^  to  be  applied  to  the  ear. 

5.  Never  permit  the  introduction  of  a  probe,  or  stick,  or 
anything  else,  into  the  ear,  for  any  purpose  whatever. 

In  one  case  art  is  admissible,  —  that  is,  in  religious  worship ; 
and  this  being  only  once  or  twice  a  week,  the  hearing  will  not 
be  appreciably  impaired  in  the  course  of  several  years. 

The  writer  knows  a  lady  who  has  not  heard  a  sermon  for 
several  years,  although  a  regular  attendant.  She  now  hears 
with  the  utmost  ease.  This  has  been  accomplished  by  a  pecu- 
liar arrangement  of  that  part  of  the  pulpit  on  which  the  Bible 
is  laid,  and  a  distribution  of  pipes  under  the  floor  and  through 
the  pew-seat.  The  sound  of  the  speaker's  voice  can  be  trans- 
mitted, with  perfect  distinctness,  to  various  parts  of  the  house, 
without  appreciably  affecting  the  volume  of  sound;  that  is, 
an  apparatus  arranged  for  one  person,  enables  him  to  hear  with 
perfect  clearness  ;  if  extended  to  a  dozen  others,  the  first  one 
hears  as  well  as  if  there  was  but  a  single  attachment.  To 
Christian  men  and  women,  whose  hearing  is  defective,  and 
who  are  thereby  cut  off  from  one  of  the  greatest  privileges  of 
life,  this  device  is  of  inestimable  value ;  for,  as  we  grow  old, 
and  the  ties*  which  bind  us  to  the  world  become,  almost  daily, 
fewer  and  more  fragile,  we  instinctively  draw  closer  to  Him, 
who  has  appointed  religious  worship  as  a  means  of  communi- 
cating to  us  his  will.  Those  communications  become  sweeter, 
more  nourishing,  and  more  necessary,  every  day,  to  the  ripe 
and  aged  Christian  ;  they  are  the  greatest  solace  in  life.  Thus 
it  is  he  feels,  with  king  David,  "  a  day  in  thy  courts  is  better 
than  a  thousand  "  —  anywhere  else. 


WHITEWASHES.  609 


WHITEWASHES. 

COMMON  lime  quickly  and  perfectly  absorbs  carbonic,  and 
other  disagreeable  and  unhealthful  gases  and  odors ;  and  for 
this  purpose,  in  times  of  plagues,  epidemics,  and  wasting  dis- 
eases, is  scattered  plentifully  in  cellars,  privies,  stables,  and 
gutters  of  the  streets.  It  not  only  purifies  the  air  and  pro- 
motes physical  health,  but,  as  a  whitewash,  enlivens  and  beau- 
tifies wherever  it  is  applied.  As  it  is  easily  washed  off  by  the 
rain,  if  not  properly  prepared  as  a  wash,  it  has  to  be  so  fre- 
quently reapplied  that  it  is  considered  troublesome  by  many ; 
hence  the  rich  use  paint,  and  the  poor  use  nothing  to  protect 
their  dwellings,  fences,  etc.,  from  the  ravages  of  the  weather ; 
yet  the  difference  between  a  well  whitewashed  farm  and  one 
where  no  lime  is  used,  would  amount  to  a  large  percentage  in 
case  of  a  sale.  For  the  physical  and  moral  benefits  which  may 
arise  from  the  abundant  use  of  lime  as  a  whitewash,  several 
modes  of  preparing  it,  so  as  to  make  it  more  durable,  whether 
applied  in-doors  or  out,  are  here  given,  with  the  suggestion 
that  the  same  amount  of  money  necessary  to  keep  a  man's 
premises  well  whitewashed,  cannot  be  expended  to  as  great  a 
moral  and  healthful  advantage  in  any  other  way. 

1.  One  ounce  of  white  vitriol  (sulphate  of  zinc),  and  three 
ounces  of  common  salt,  to  every  four  pounds  of  good  fresh 
lime,  that  is,  lime  which  has  not  fallen  into  dry  powder  from 
exposure  to  the  atmosphere,  with  water  enough  to  make  it 
sufficiently  thin  to  be  applied  with  a  brush,  makes  a  durable 
out-door  whitewash. 

2.  Take  a  clean  water-tight  barrel,  or  other  wooden  cask, 
and  put  into  it  half  a  bushel  of  lime  in  its  rock  state,  pour 
enough  boiling  water  on  it  to  cover  it  five  inche's  deep,  an-1 
stir  it  briskly  until  it  is  dissolved  or  thoroughly  "slacked," 
then  put  in  more  water,  and  add  two  pounds  of  sulphate  of  zinc, 

—  that  is,  white  vitriol,  —  and  one  pound  of  common  salt ;  these 
harden  the  wash  and  prevent  cracking ;  this  may  be  colored, 
according  to  taste,  by  adding  three  pounds  of  yellow  ochre  for 
a  cream  color,  four  pounds  of  umber  for  a  fawn  color,  with  a 
pound  each  of  Indian  red  and  lampblack. 

3.  Mix  up  half  a  pail  of  lime  and  water  ready  for  white- 


610  RESIGNATION. 

washing ;  make  a  starch  of  half  a  pint  of  flour,  and  pour  it, 
while  hot,  into  the  lime-water  while  it  is  hot.  This  does  not 
rub  off  easily. 

4.  A  good  in-door  whitewash  for  a  house  of  six  or  eight 
rooms  is  made  -thus :  take  three  pounds  of  Paris  white  and  one 
pound  of  white  glue ;  dissolve  the  glue  in  hot  water,  and  make 
a  thick  wash  with  the  Paris  white  and  hot  water,  then  add  the 
dissolved  glue  and  sufficient  water  to  make  it  of  the  proper 
consistence  for  applying  with  a  brush.  If  any  is  left  over,  it 
hardens  by  the  morning;  but  it  may  be  dissolved  with  hot 
water ;  still  it  is  best  to  make  only  enough  to  be  used  each 
day ;  spread  it  on  while  it  is  warm. 

It  is  said  to  add  to  the  value  and  lastingness  of  any  lime- 
wash,  if  the  vessel  in  which  it  is  slacking  is  kept  covered 
with  a  cloth ;  this  not  only  confines  the  heat,  but  keeps  the 
very  finest  of  the  particles  of  lime  from  being  carried  off  by 
steam,  wind,  or  otherwise. 

When  it  is  taken  into  account  how  much  buildings  and 
fences  are  protected  against  the  destructive  influences  of  the 
weather,  if  they  are  plentifully  whitewashed  in  April  and  No- 
vember, to  say  nothing  of  the  cheeriness,  beauty,  and  purity 
which  it  adds  to  any  dwelling,  it  is  greatly  to  be  desired  that 
the  practice  of  whitewashing  liberally  twice  a  year  should  be 
adopted  by  every  household  in  the  nation,  where  paint  can- 
not be  afforded,  and  on  every  farm. 


RESIGNATION. 

ONE  of  the  most  instructive  articles  we  have  read  for  a  long 
time  on  the  true  meaning,  nature,  and  uses  of  "resignation," 
is  found  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  April,  1863.  It  is  full 
of  a  sound  philosophy,  and  we  certainly  urge  our  readers, 
whether  old  or  young,  sick  or  well,  fortunate  or  unfortunate, 
if  they  can  possibly  save  twenty-five  cents,  to  procure  the  num- 
ber, and  read  and  study,  and  read  it  again,  from  beginning  to 
end.  We  have  felt  the  truth  of  its  sentiments  a  thousand  times, 
as  a  physician.  It  is  said  there  is  but  a  step  from  the  sublime 
to  the  ridiculous  ;  it  is  just  as  true  that  there  is  but  a  step  be- 


RESIGNATION.  611 

tween  courage  and  cowardice  in  this  matter  of  "  resignation  ;  " 
but  that  step  is  the  distance  between  life  and  death  to  many 
an  invalid.  One  man  is  sick ;  and  laying  the  blame  of  it  on  the 
Almighty,  whines  out,  "It's  the  Lord's  will ;  "  and  sits  about, 
and  lounges,  and  loafs  around,  for  weeks  and  months,  waiting 
to  get  well.  We  verily  believe  that  full  one  half  of  such  peo- 
ple, if  not  all  of  them,  don't  want  to  get  well,  for  then  they 
would  have  to  get  up  and  do  something.  There  is  another 
class,  true  men  and  women,  persons  of  force  are  they,  and  capa- 
ble of  great  deeds,  who  shake  off  sickness,  and  sloth,  and  idle- 
ness, and  a  craven  submission  to  the  mishaps  which  may  befall 
them  ;  believing,  fully,  that  resignation  is  a  grace  only  when 
it  bows  to  what  cannot  be  helped,  and  was  not  brought  on  by 
wickedness,  or  the  want  of  wisdom  on  their  part.  If  calamities 
come  upon  us  without  our  fault,  and,  at  the  same  time,  are 
clearly  beyond  removal  by  any  power  of  our  own,  then  a  dig- 
nified and  submissive  resignation  is  a  nobility,  which  only  a 
great  heart  can  achieve  ;  then  there  is  a  sweetness  in  resigna- 
tion which  pays  for  all  that  it  cost ;  for,  while  bending  the 
knee  and  bowing  the  head,  the  eye  looks  trustingly  upward, 
and,  piercing  through  the  black  and  threatening  cloud,  discerns 
the  gladdening  sun  in  the  distance,  and  patiently  and  piously 
bides  its  time.  This  is  that  faith  in  God  which  sanctifies  and 
raises  man  to  be  akin  to  angels.  If  a  man  fails  in  business,  it 
is  not,  at  any  time  of  life,  a  true  resignation  to  give  up,  for  the 
remainder  of  his  days,  and  make  no  further  effort  to  recover 
himself,  any  more  than  it  is  a  true  resignation  for  a  man  who 
gets  sick  to  cry  out,  "  The  will  of  the  Lord  be  done  ] "  as  if  it 
could  be  his  will  to  see  a  child  of  his  suffer, 

"  For  we  his  offspring  are." 

He  may  permit  suffering ;  but  he  has  no  agency  in  bringing  it 
on  any  creature  of  his.  As  long  as  sickness  and  trouble  are 
the  results  of  our  own  wrong-doing,  of  our  yielding  to  sense, 
and  passion,  and  appetite,  instead  of  abandoning  ourselves  to 
helplessness  under  the  deceitful  plea  of  a  pious  resignation, 
we  should  heroically  shake  them  off  as  a  viper,  or  as  some 
deadly  spell.  The  mishaps  of  life  are  the  result  of  ignorance, 
carelessness,  or  wickedness  of  ourselves  or  others ;  we  should, 
in  every  case,  seek  out  the  specific  cause,  and,  if  in  ourselves, 
rectify  it;  if  from  the  misdoings  of  others,  endeavor  to  rectify 


612  DROWNING. 

it  also ;  and  if  no  human  efforts  can  accomplish  such  a  rectifica- 
tion, then,  and  not  till  then,  is  it  a  true  heroism  and  a  sterling 
piety,  a  genuine  "resignation,"  to  say,  in  loving  confidence 
and  hope,  "  THY  WILL  BE  DONE." 


DROWNING. 

As  multitudes  go  a  bathing  during  the  heats  of  summer, 
and  even  the  very  best  swimmers  are  liable  to  be  drowned, 
perhaps  more  liable  than  others,  from  their  very  fearlessness, 
it  is  a  proper  precaution  for  every  individual  to  be  familiar 
with  the  means  of  resuscitation.  The  London  physicians  ad- 
vise, — 

1.  To  send,  instantly,  for  a  medical  man,  and,  while  he  is 
coming,  place  the  patient  in  the  open  air,  unless  the  weather 
is  very  cold;  expose  the  face  and   chest,  especially,  to  the 
breeze. 

2.  To  clear  the  Throat.  —  Place  the  patient,  gently,  face 
downward,  with  one  wrist  under  the  forehead,  in  which  posi- 
tion all  fluids  will  escape  by  the  mouth,  and  the  tongue  itself 
will  fall  forward,  leaving  the  entrance  into  the  windpipe  free. 
Assist  this   operation   by  wiping  and  cleansing   the  mouth. 
If  there  be   breathing,  wait  and  watch ;  if  not,  or  if  it  fail, 
then, 

3.  To  excite  Respiration.  —  Turn  the  patient  well   and   in- 
stantly on  the  side,  and, 

4.  Excite  the  nostrils  with  snuff,  hartshorn,  volatile  salts,  or 
the  throat  with  a  feather,  etc.,  and  dash  cold  water  on  the  face, 
previously  rubbed  warm.     If  there  be  no  success,  lose  not  a 
moment,  but  instantly  begin, 

5.  To  imitate  Respiration. — Replace  the  patient  on  his  face, 
raising  and  supporting  the  chest  well  on  a  folded  coat  or  other 
article  of  dress. 

6.  Turn  the  body  very  gently  on  the  side  and  a  little  beyond, 
and  then   briskly  on   the   face,  alternately;  repeating  these 
measures   deliberately,   efficiently,   and   perseveringly,  about 
fifteen  times  in  the  mmute,  or  every  four  seconds,  occasionally 
varying  the  side.     [By  placing  the  patient  on  the  chest,  its 
cavity  is  compressed  by  the  weight  of  the  body,  and  expira- 


DROWNING.  613 

tion  takes  place ;  when  turned  on  the  side,  this  pressure  is  re- 
moved, and  inspiration  occurs.]  * 

7.  On  each  occasion  that  the  body  is  replaced  on  the  face, 
make  uniform  but  efficient  pressure,  with  brisk  movement  on 
the  back,  between  and  below  the  shoulder-blades  or  bones,  on 
each  side,  removing  the  pressure  immediately  before  turning 
the  body  on  the  side. 

8.  After  respiration  has  been  restored,  promote  the  warmth 
of  the  body  by  the  application  of  hot  flannels,  bottles  or  blad- 
ders of  hot  water,  heated  bricks,  etc.,  to  the  stomach,  the  arm- 
pits, between  the  thighs,  and  to  the  soles  of  the  feet,  to  induce 
circulation  and  warmth. 

9.  During  the  whole  time  do  not  cease  to  rub  the  limbs  up- 
ward, with  firm,  grasping  pressure,  and  with  energy,  using 
handkerchiefs,  flannels,  etc. 

10.  Let  the  limbs   be   thus  warmed,  and   dried,  and  then 
clothed,  the  bystanders  supplying  the  requisite  garments. 

Cautions.  —  1.  Send  quickly  for  medical  assistance,  and  for 
dry  clothing.  2.  Avoid  all  rough  usage  and  turning  the  body 
on  the  back.  3.  Under  no  circumstances  hold  up  the  body  by 
the  feet ;  4.  Nor  roll  the  body  on  casks ;  5.  Nor  rub  the  body 
with  salts  or  spirits  ;  6.  Nor  inject  tobacco  smoke  or  infusion 
of  tobacco.  7.  Avoid  the  continuous  warm  bath.  8.  Be  par- 
ticularly careful,  in  every  case,  to  prevent  persons  crowding 
around  the  body. 

General  Observations.  —  On  the  restoration  of  life,  a  tea- 
spoonful  of  warm  water  should  be  given ;  and  then,  if  the 
power  of  swallowing  is  returned,  small  quantities  of  wine,  or 
brandy  and  water,  warm,  or  coffee.  The  patient  should  be 
kept  in  bed,  and  a  disposition  to  sleep  encouraged.  The  treat- 
ment  recommended  should  be  persevered  in  for  a  considerable 
time,  as  it  is  an  erroneous  opinion  that  persons  are  irrecover- 
able because  life  does  not  soon  make  its  appearance,  cases 
having  been  successfully  treated  after  persevering  several 
hours, 

In  endeavoring  to  rescue  a  drowning  person,  take  him  by 
the  arm  from  behind,  between  the  elbow  and  the  shoulder. 
A  good  swimmer  can,  by  "  treading  water,"  catch  both  arms 
thus,  and  keep  the  person  from  going  under  for  an  l^our,  the 
very  struggles  of  the  victim  aiding  in  buoying  him  up,  for  his 
feet,  then,  are  mainly  engaged,  and  he,  also,  to  that  extent, 


614  ESCAPING  FROM  FIRE. 

"treads  water."  If  a  drowning  person  is  seized  anywhere 
else,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  clutch  with  a  death  grip,  and  both 
perish. 

Any  one  can  remain  for  hours  in  water,  whether  he  can  swim 
or  not,  by  clasping  his  hands  behind  him,  throwing  himself  on 
his  back,  so  as  to  allow  only  his  nose  to  be  out  of  the  water ; 
a  very  little  presence  of  mind,  force  of  will,  and  confidence, 
will  enable  any  one  to  assume  this  position. 


ESCAPING  FROM  FIRE. 

HUMAN  life  has  been  often  thrown  away,  from  persons  not 
taking  the  precaution  to  accustom  their  minds  to  dwell,  at 
times,  on  the  proper  method  of  acting  in  emergencies ;  from 
want  of  this,  many  rush  into  the  very  jaws  of  death,  when  a 
single  moment's  calm  reflection  would  have  pointed  out  a  cer- 
tain and  easy  means  of  escape.  It  is  the  more  necessary  to 
fix  in  the  mind  a  general  course  of  action  in  case  of  being  in  a 
house  while  it  is  on  fire,  since  tUe  most  dangerous  conflagra- 
tions occur  at  dead  of  night,  and,  at  the  moment  of  being 
aroused  from  a  sound  sleep,  the  brain  is  apt  to  become  too 
confused  to  direct  the  bodily  movements  with  any  kind  of  ap- 
propriateness, without  some  previous  preparation,  in  the  man- 
ner contained  herein.  The  London  Fire  Department  suggests, 
in  case  the  premises  are  on  fire,  to, — 

1.  Be  careful  to  acquaint  yourself  with  the  best  means  of 
exit  from  the  house,  both  at  the  top  and  bottom. 

2.  On  the  first  alarm,  reflect  before  you  act.     If  in  bed  at 
the  time,  wrap  yourself  in  a  blanket  or  bedside  carpet.     Open 
no  more  doors  than  are  absolutely  necessary,  and  shut  every 
door  after  you. 

3.  There  is  always  from  eight  to  twelve  inches  of  pure  air 
close  to  the  ground  ;  if  you  cannot,  therefore,  walk  upright 
through  the  smoke,  drop  on  your  hands  and  knees,  and  thus 
progress.     A  wetted  silk  handkerchief,  a  piece  of  flannel,  or  a 
worsted  stocking  drawn  over  the  face,  permits  breathing,  and, 
to  a  great  extent,  excludes  the  smoke. 

4.  If  you  can  neither  make  your  way  upward  nor  downward, 
get  into  a  front  room ;  if  there  is  a  family,  see  that  they  are 


ESCAPING  FROM  FIRE.  615 

all  collected  here,  and  keep  the  door  closed  as  much  as  possi- 
ble, for  remember  that  smoke  always  follows  a  draught,  and 
fire  always  rushes  after  smoke. 

5.  On  no  account  throw  yourself,  or  allow  others  to  throw 
themselves,  from  the  window.     If  no  assistance  is  at  hand,  and 
you  are  in  extremity,  tie  the  sheets  together,  having  fastened 
one  side  to  some  heavy  piece  of  furniture,  and  let  down  the 
women  and  children,  one  by  one,  by  tying  the  end  of  the  line 
of  sheets  around  the  waist,  and  lowering  them  through  the 
window  that  is  over  the  door,  rather  than  one  that  is  over  the 
area.     You  can  easily  let  yourself  down  after  the  helpless  are 
saved. 

6.  If  a  woman's  clothes  catch  fire,  let  her  instantly  roll  her- 
self over  and  over  on  the  ground.     If  a  man  be  present,  let 
him  throw  her  down  and  do  the  like,  and  then  wrap  her  up  in 
a  rug,  coat,  or  the  first  woollen  thing  that  is  at  hand. 

Of  the  preceding  suggestions,  there  are  two  which  cannot 
be  too  deeply  engraven  on  the  mind :  That  the  air  is  compara- 
tively pure  within  a  foot  of  the  floor  ;  and  that  any  wetted  silk 
or  woollen  texture,  thrown  over  the  face,  excludes  smoke  to  a 
great  extent.  It  is  often  the  case  that  the  sleeper  is  awakened 
by  the  suffocating  effects  of  the  smoke,  and  the  very  first  effort 
should  be  to  get  rid  of  it,  so  as  to  give  time  to  compose  the 
mind,  and  make  some  muscular  effort  to  escape. 

In  case  any  portion  of  the  body  is  burned,  it  cannot  be  too 
strongly  impressed  on  the  mind,  that  putting  the  burned  part 
under  water,  or  milk,  or  other  bland  fluid,  gives  instantaneous 
and  perfect  relief  from  all  pain  whatever  ;  and  there  it  should 
remain  until  the  burn  can  be  covered,  perfectly,  with  half  an 
inch  or  more  of  common  wheaten  flour,  put  on  with  a  dredging- 
box,  or  in  any  other  way,  and  allowed  to  remain  until  a  cure 
is  effected,  when  the  dry,  caked  flour  will  fall  off,  or  can  be 
softened  with  water,  disclosing  a  beautiful,  new,  and  healthful 
skin,  in  all  cases  where  the  burns  have  been  superficial.  But, 
in  any  case  of  burn,  the  first  effort  should  be  to  compose  the 
mind,  by  instantaneously  removing  bodily  pain,  which  is  done 
as  above  named ;  the  philosophy  of  it  being,  that  the  fluid, 
whether  water,  milk,  oil,  etc.,  excludes  the  air  from  the  wound ; 
the  flour  does  the  same  thing ;  and  it  is  rare,  indeed,  that 
water  and  flour  are  not  instantaneously  had  in  all  habitable 
localities. 


616  SAVING  MINISTERS. 


SAVING  MINISTERS. 

IT  has  been  proposed  in  the  public  papers,  as  a  means  of 
preserving  clergymen  for  a  longer  use,  to  a  greater  age,  that, 
while  they  are  young,  they  should  not  be  expected  to  do  so 
much  as  is  now  required  of  them ;  that,  for  the  first  five  years 
of  their  ministry,  only  one  sermon  on  the  Sabbath  should  be 
given.  Not  one  minister  in  a  million  is  ever  disabled  by  hard 
study,  or  dies  prematurely  from  that  cause.  A  far  better  plan 
would  be  to  require  them  to  preach  every  day,  and  Sunday  too, 
for  the  first  years  of  their  ministry,  and,  "  as  ye  go,  preach ; " 
take  circuits,  and  preach  in  destitute  places,  five,  or  ten,  or 
fifteen  miles  apartj  a  sermon  a  day,  on  an  average,  the  year 
round,  and  two  or  three  on  Sundays,  the  oftener  the  easier ; 
the  advantages  are,  that  they  would  become  acquainted  with 
the  country ;  would  be  brought  into  personal  contact  w  ith  a 
great  variety  of  persons ;  would  see  human  nature  in  its  mul- 
titudinous phases ;  and  thus,  in  after  life,  would  bo  able  to  read 
a  book  more  instructive  to  them  than  any  other  except  the 
Bible ;  and,  reading  it  well,  would  put  in  their  hands  a  key 
which  would  unlock  the  human  heart,  and  give  them  so  com- 
plete an  access  to  it,  that  the  people  would  say,  "  Never  man 
spake  like  this  man."  "  He  told  me  all  that  ever  I  did."  Pat- 
rick Henry  owed  his  greatest  power  to  what  he  learned  of 
human  nature,  by  talking  to  all  sorts  of  people  in  his  little 
country  store.  Another  advantage  is,  that  this  daily  active 
out-door  life,  breathing  the  pure  air  for  almost  all  of  daylight, 
would  enable  them  to  work  off  that  diseased  bodily  condition 
which  is  generated  in  theological  seminaries;  and  would  so 
knit  and  compact  the  constitution,  so  renovate  it,  not  only  by 
the  exercise,  but  by  the  change  of  food  and  association,  as  to 
lay  the  foundation  for  many  years  of  healthfulness  in  the  fu- 
ture. It  is  impossible  for  an  intelligent  man  to  doubt,  for  an 
instant,  that  four  or  five  years  spent  in  riding  every  day  on 
horseback,  in  the  open  air,  with  the  accompanying  and  exhila- 
rating mental  exercise  required  in  preaching,  would  be  aa 
certain  to  build  up  the  constitution,  as  spending  from  morning 
until  night  in  confined  rooms,  and  eating  heartily  all  the  time, 
without  any  systematic  exercise,  would  pull  it  down  and 


SICKNESS  NOT  CAUSELESS.  617 

destroy  it.  There  is  nothing  perplexing,  or  mystic,  or  mind- 
racking,  in  ordinary  ministerial  duty ;  it  is  more  of  calm  con- 
templation, like  that  of  the  natural  philosopher, — the  longest 
lived  of  all  other  classes,  as  statistics  say ;  they  study  the 
works  of  God ;  the  clergy  study  his  word,  which  is  a  surer 
"word  of  prophecy,"  and  a  plainer.  The  destroyers  of  our 
clergy  are  not  hard  study,  not  the  difficulties  connected  with 
their  calling  ;  but  reckless  and  unnecessary  exposures,  irregu- 
lar efforts,  wrong  habits  of  eating,  unwise  neglect  of  whole- 
some bodily  exercises,  bad  hours  of  study,  and  a  criminal 
inattention  to  the  securement  of  those  bodily  regularities, 
which  are  indispensable  to  health  the  world  over.  Preaching 
often,  does  not  kill,  —  look  at  the  Whitefields,  and  the  Wesleys, 
and  multitudes  of  others  like  them ;  confinement,  even,  does 
not  kill,  —  Baxter,  and  Bunyan,  and  many  more,  lived  in  jails 
for  years  together,  and  that,  too,  without  opportunities  of  ex- 
ercise ;  for  their  living  was  plain,  and  that  not  over-abundant, 
nor  tempting  either. 


SICKNESS   NOT   CAUSELESS. 

THERE  never  can  be  disease  without  a  cause ;  and  almost  al- 
ways the  cause  is  in  the  person  who  is  ill ;  he  has  either  done 
something  which  he  ought  not  to  have  done,  or  he  has  omitted 
something  which  he  should  have  attended  to. 

Another  important  item  is,  that  sickness  does  not,  as  a  gen- 
eral thing,  come  on  suddenly ;  as  seldom  does  it  thus  come,  as 
a  house  becomes  enveloped  in  flames  on  the  instant  of  the  fire 
first  breaking  out.  There  is,  generally,  a  spark,  a  tiny  flame, 
a  trifling  blaze.  It  is  so  with  disease  ;  and  promptitude  is  al- 
ways an  important  element  of  safety  and  deliverance.  A  little 
child  wakes  up  in  the  night  with  a  disturbing  cough,  but 
which,  after  a  while,  passes  off,  and  the  parents  feel  relieved ; 
the  second  night  the  cough  is  more  decided ;  the  third,  it  is 
croup,  and,  in  a  few  hours  more,  the  darling  is  dead ! 

Had  that  child  been  kept  warm  in  bed  the  whole  of  the  day 
after  the  first  coughing  was  noticed,  had  fed  lightly,  and  got 
abundant,  warm  sleep,  it  would  have  had  no  cough  the  second 
night,  and  the  day  after  would  have  been  well. 

An  incalculable  amount  of  human  suffering,  and  many  lives, 


618  CANCER. 

would  be  saved  every  year,  if  two  things  were  done  uniformly. 
First,  when  any  uncomfortable  feeling  is  noticed,  begin  at  once, 
trace  the  cause  of  it,  and  avoid  that  cause  ever  after.  Second, 
use  means,  at  once,  to  remove  the  symptom ;  and,  among  these, 
the  best,  those  which  are  most  universally  available  and  applica- 
ble, are  rest,  warmth,  abstinence,  a  clean  person,  and  a  pure  air. 
When  animals  are  ill,  they  follow  nature's  instinct,  and  lie 
down  to  rest.  Many  a  valuable  life  has  been  lost  by  the  un- 
wise efforts  of  the  patient  to  "  keep  up,"  when  the  most  fitting 
place  was  a  warm  bed  and  a  quiet  apartment. 

Some  persons  attempt  to  "  harden  their  constitutions,"  by 
exposing  themselves  to  the  causes  which  induced  their  suffer- 
ings ;  as  if  they  could,  by  so  doing,  get  accustomed  to  the  ex- 
posure, and  ever  thereafter  endure  it  with  impunity.  A  good 
constitution,  like  a  good  garment,  lasts  the  longer  by  its  being 
taken  care  of.  If  a  finger  has  been  burned  by  putting  it  in 
the  fire,  and  is  cured  never  so  well,  it  will  be  burned  again  as 
often  as  it  is  put  in  the  fire ;  such  a  result  is  inevitable. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  hardening  one's  self  against  the 
causes  of  disease.  What  gives  a  man  a  cold  to-day  will  give 
him  a  cold  to-morrow,  and  the  next  day,  and  the  next.  What 
lies  in  the  stomach  like  a  heavy  weight  to-day,  will  do  the 
same  to-morrow ;  not  in  a  less  degree,  but  a  greater ;  and,  as 
we  get  older,  or  get  more  under  the  influence  of  disease,  lesser 
causes  have  greater  ill  effects ;  so  that,  the  older  we  get,  the 
greater  need  is  there  for  increased  efforts  to  favor  ourselves, 
to  avoid  hardships  and  exposures,  and  be  more  prompt  in  rec- 
tifying any  symptom,  by  rest,  warmth,  and  abstinence. 


CANCER. 

CANCER  is  the  Latin  word  for  "  Crab,"  and  was  applied  to 
that  kind  of  sore  which  has  the  spraggling  look  of  that  ugly 
animal.  The  essence  of  cancer  is  in  a  depraved  condition  of 
the  blood ;  it  is  hard,  soft,  or  yielding,  as  a  sponge ;  it  is  a 
loathsome,  and,  thus  far,  an  incurable  disease.  It  is  worse 
than  incurable  ;  because,  if  healed  up,  or  cut  out,  at  one  place, 
it  is  sure  to  sprout  up  in  a  dozen  others.  Sometimes  a  sore  is 
cured,  that  looks  like  a  cancer,  and  the  pretended  curer  is 


CANCER.  619 

willing  enough  that  it  should  be  considered  a  real  one  ;  hence 
ingenious  impositions  have  been  practised  on  many,  and  many 
hearts  sickened  to  death  by  false  hopes.  Cancer  is  developed 
in  two  ways  almost  always.  First,  nature  makes  an  effort  to 
pass  out  of  the  system,  through  some  gland,  matters,  the  pres- 
ence of  which  is  hurtful ;  if  thwarted,  the  gland,  under  certain 
conditions,  becomes  cancerous ;  becomes  an  eating,  running 
sore,  which,  if  let  alone,  will  always  secure  a  longer  life  than 
if  it  is  not  allowed  to  run,  by  "  healing  it  up,"  or  cutting  it  out. 
Second,  when  a  gland  is  injured  by  a  cold  settling  in  it,  or  by 
a  bruise,  cancerous  disease  begins  to  develop  itself  when  the 
blood  is  in  a  depraved  condition.  The  same  cold  or  bruise 
would  have  passed  off  without  injury,  had  the  individual  pos- 
sessed vigorous  health.  Cancer  is  confined,  chiefly,  to  females, 
because  of  their  in-door  life,  so  promotive  of  a  poisoned  blood 
from  want  of  exercise,  and  from  the  routine  nature  of  their  ex- 
istence. Its  commonest  seat  is  the  left  breast,  first  appearing 
an  undiscolored  hard  lump  the  size  of  a  marble  or  pea,  growing 
very  slowly,  and,  as  it  becomes  more  active,  giving  the  char- 
acteristic star-like  pains,  —  pains  which  shoot  out,  or  lancinate 
in  every  direction,  like  the  rays  of  a  star.  Any  pain  of  this 
sort,  confined  to  one  spot,  should  be  always  regarded  with  ap- 
prehension. After  a  while  the  skin  assumes  a  puckered  ap- 
pearance, sometimes  with  heat ;  soon  breaks  and  throws  out  a 
thin  fluid,  with  more  or  less  blood ;  next  emitting  a  most  offen- 
sive smell,  as  the  fungus  mass  springs  forth,  and  eats  its 
horrible  way  into  the  very  vitals. 

Cancer,  of  a  more  superficial  character,  sometimes  attacks 
the  nose,  the  lower  lip,  and  the  corner  of  the  eye,  looking,  at 
first,  like  a  fever-blister,  or  a  wart  with  an  uneven  surface ;  at 
other  times  it  comes  with  a  dry  scale,  which  falls,  or  is  picked 
off;  another  and  another  comes,  each  going  deeper,  until  the 
hateful  sore  assumes  its  characteristic  appearance.  It  is  ad- 
mitted, the  world  over,  because  statistical  tables  prove  it,  that 
cutting  out  a  cancer,  especially  from  the  breast,  is  fatal  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten.  Whether  that  tenth  case  may  not  be  a 
cancer  only  in  appearance,  is  a  question.  As  all  acknowledge 
that  cancer  arises  from  a  depraved  condition  of  the  blood, 
those  who  fear  cancer,  with  or  without  cause,  should  use 
means  to  keep  the  general  system  in  the  highest  health  possi- 
ble, as  a  means  of  purifying  the  blood,  and  thus  indefinitely 


620  APOPLEXY. 

postpone  the  breaking  out  of  the  cancerous  sore  ;  keeping  it 
in  its  hard  state,  as  it  were,  just  as  tubercles  in  the  lungs, 
which  are  hard  lumps  there,  and  which  are  not  capable  of 
causing  common  consumption  as  long  as  they  remain  hard, 
may  be  kept  in  abeyance,  for  a  long  lifetime,  by  a  vigorous 
following  out  of  those  activities  which  the  experienced  physi- 
cian has  so  often  seen  to  be  efficient  in  such  cases.  Mean- 
while, if  any  person  has  an  actual  sore  which  seems  to  be  of 
a  cancerous  character,  try  anybody  and  anything  reasonably 
promising  even  a  slight  benefit. 


APOPLEXY. 

APOPLEXY  means  w  stricken  from,"  —  a  description  given  by 
the  Greeks,  under  the  feeling  that  it  was  of  unearthly  origin. 
The  person  falls  down,  as  if  suddenly  struck  with  death. 
There  is  neither  thought,  feeling,  nor  voluntary  motion. 
There  is  no  sign  of  life,  except  that  of  deep,  heavy  breathing. 
It  comes  on  with  the  suddenness  of  the  lightning's  flash,  and 
with  as  little  premonition.  A  common  fainting-fit  occurs  sud- 
denly ;  but  there  is  no  breathing,  no  pulse,  and  the  face  is  pale 
and  shrunken.  In  apoplexy,  if  the  person  is  not  really  dead, 
the  face  is  flushed,  the  breathing  loud,  and  the  pulse  full  and 
strong,  usually.  In  mild  attacks,  a  person  is  found  in  bed  of 
a  morning,  apparently  in  a  sound  sleep ;  but,  if  so,  he  can  be 
easily  waked  up.  In  apoplexy,  no  amount  of  shaking  makes 
any  impression.  The  earliest  Greek  writers  described  apo- 
plexy with  a  minute  accuracy  which  has  scarcely  been  ex- 
ceeded since,  showing  that  it  is  a  malady  belonging  to  all  time. 
To  pass  from  apparent  perfect  health  to  instant  death  on  enter- 
ing one's  own  dwelling,  or  sitting  down  to  the  family  table,  or 
while  at  the  happy  fireside,  in  the  loving  interchange  of  affec- 
tionate offices,  strikes  us  as  being  perfectly  terrible.  But  the 
terror  belongs  to  the  witnesses;  the  victim  is  as  perfectly 
destitute  of  thought,  feeling,  sensation,  and  consciousness,  for 
the  time  being,  as  if  the  head  had  been  taken  off  by  a  cannon- 
ball.  In  many  cases,  after  lying  for  hours,  and  even  days,  in 
a  state  of  perfect  insensibility,  the  patient  wakes  up,  as  if  from 
an  uneasy  sleep  or  dream ;  but  often,  as  many  sadly  know, 


APOPLEXY.  621 

there  is  no  return  to  life  again.  The  essential  nature  of  the 
disease  seems  to  be  such  an  excess  of  blood  in  the  brain,  that 
its  appropriate  vessels  or  channels  cannot  contain  it,  and  it  is 
"  extravasated,"  let  out,  upon  the  substance  of  the  brain  itself, 
and  thus  arrests  the  functions  of  life."  Persons  with  short  neck, 
who  are  thick-set,  corpulent,  are  almost  the  sole  actual  sub- 
jects of  apoplexy,  when  not  induced  by  falls,  blows,  shocks, 
and  over-doses  of  certain  drugs.  Apoplexy  is  an  avoidable 
disease,  except  in  some  cases  of  accidents,  which  we  can 
neither  foresee  nor  prevent ;  it  is,  essentially,  too  much  blood 
in  the  brain.  This  blood  is  either  sent  there  too  rapidly,  or, 
when  there,  is  detained  in  some  unnatural  manner,  the  essen- 
tial effect  being  the  same.  Whatever  excites  the  brain,  does 
so  by  sending  an  unnatural  amount  of  blood  there,  such  as 
intense  and  long  thought  on  one  subject ;  all  kinds  of  liquors, 
any  drink  containing  alcohol,  whether  ale,  beer,  cider,  wine, 
or  brandy,  excites  the  brain  and  endangers  apoplexy.  So  will 
a  hearty  meal,  especially  if  alcoholic  drinks  are  taken  at  the 
same  time  ;  going  to  bed  soon  after  eating  heartily  ;  sleeping 
on  the  back,  if  corpulent,  may  bring  on  an  attack  any  night ; 
so  will  a  hot  bath  ;  so  will  a  cold  bath  soon  after  eating.  The 
ultimate  effects  of  all  opiates  are  to  detain  the  blood  in  the 
brain,  while  the  things  just  mentioned  send  it  there  in  excess. 
The  great  preventives  are  warm  feet,  regular  daily  bodily 
habits,  eating  nothing  later  than  three  o'clock  P.  M.,  and  the 
avoidance  of  opiates,  tobacco,  and  all  that  can  intoxicate.  In 
case  of  an  attack,  send  for  a  physician.  Meanwhile,  put  the 
feet  in  hot  water,  and  envelop  the  head  with  cold;  ice  is  still 
better.  It  is  safer  to  live  in  a  hilly  than  level  country,  in  town 
than  country.  Winter  is  more  dangerous  than  summer.  The 
liability  increases  rapidly  after  forty  years  of  age,  greatest  at 
sixty,  when  it  gradually  diminishes.  Statistics  seem  to  show 
that  the  most  dangerous  years  are  forty-eight,  fifty-eight,  sixty- 
six;  while  forty-six  and  forty-nine  are  almost  exempt.  The 
well-to-do  are  more  liable  than  the  laboring.  Sudden  changes 
of  weather  promote  attacks.  Let  the  liable,  especially,  live  in 
reference  to  these  well-established  facts. 


622  DIRTY  CHILDREN. 


"DIRTY  CHILDREN." 

THERE  is  an  undefined  impression  left  on  the  minds  of  many, 
in  passing  a  group  of  chubby-looking  children  playing  in  the 
street,  or  by  the  roadside,  barefooted,  bareheaded,  and  ragged, 
begrimed  with  dust  or  mud,  that "  dirt  must  be  healthy."  And 
when  there  is  noticed  around  the  cabins  of  the  country  poor,  or 
the  shanties  in  the  city  outskirts,  a  crowd  of  ragamuffin  urchins 
of  all  sizes,  like  the  regular  gradations  of  a  ladder,  another  no- 
tion is  almost  formed,  in  distinct  words,  that  "poverty  is 
healthy,"  as  well  as  dirt,  as  the  having  a  house  full  of  children 
is  taken  as  proof  of  vigorous  constitutions  on  the  part  of  the 
toiling  parents.  Taking  New  York  city  as  a  guide,  the  of- 
ficial reports  for  1863  show  that,  of  every  ten  deaths,  seven 
are  foreign,  although  just  half  the  population  is  foreign  born ; 
and,  as  a  class,  foreigners  are  the  poorest  and  the  filthiest  of  all 
American  large  seaboard  cities ;  of  course,  there  are  notable 
exceptions.  It  is  known  that  those  who  live  on  their  daily 
wages  average  eleven  years  less  of  life  than  those  who  are 
well-to-do.  So  that  poverty  is  as  far  from  being  healthful,  as  it 
is  from  being  agreeable.  Of  one  thousand  children  dying  un- 
der one  year  old,  nearly  three  fourths  were  born  of  foreign 
parents ;  two  thirds  of  all  the  children  dying  on  the  day  of 
their  birth  were  of  foreign  parentage.  Of  those  dying  from 
one  to  five  years  old,  three  fourths  were  born  of  poor  people. 
Of  nine  children,  Queen  Victoria  lost  none.  The  constitutions 
of  royal  pairs  may  not  be  as  vigorous  as  those  of  two  young 
laborers  ;  but  exemption  from  exhausting  toil,  and  their  ability 
to  command  roomy  residences,  well-ventilated  chambers,  and 
the  strictest  personal  cleanliness  from  earliest  infancy,  more 
than  counterbalance  other  unfavoring  circumstances.  So  far, 
then,  from  poverty  and  filth  being  elements  of  health  and  long 
life,  they  are  the  very  reverse  ;  they  directly  induce  premature 
death  as  to  grown-up  persons,  and  sow  the  seeds  of  fatal  dis- 
eases in  innocent  childhood.  During  the  first  week  of  August, 
1864,  in  New  York  city,  four  hundred  and  forty-four  children 
died ;  of  which  four  hundred  and  four  were  of  foreign  paren- 
tage, and  only  forty  were  born  of  native  parents :  that  is,  of 
ninety  per  cent,  of  the  children  dying  in  New  York,  nine  out 


SALT-RHEUM.  623 

often  are  from  the  abodes  of  poverty  and  untidiness.  Fifteen 
thousand  children  died  in  New  York  during  1864,  of  which 
eighty-eight  per  cent,  were  the  children  of  foreigners,  and 
twelve  per  cent,  of  native  parents. 


SALT-EHEUM. 

SALT-RHEUM  is  a  disease  of  the  blood ;  it  is  an  effort  of  nature 
to  push  out  of  the  system,  through  the  skin,  that  which,  if  re- 
tained, would  work  mischief;  hence  any  external  application, 
calculated  to  heal  it  up  or  drive  it  in,  is  unnatural,  unwise,  and 
mischievous,  under  any  circumstances.  There  are  states  of 
the  system  in  which  a  hasty  "  healing  up  "  may  be  followed  by 
long,  painful,  and  dangerous  attacks  of  illness,  on  precisely  the 
same  principle  that  the  "  striking  in  "  of  measles,  or  any  other 
rash,  endangers  life.  Hence  incalculable  mischief  is  often 
caused  by  heeding  newspaper  articles,  such  as  the  following : 
"  Petroleum,  crude  or  refined,  applied  thrice  a  day  to  the  part 
affected  with  salt-rheum,  is  an  effectual  and  speedy  cure." 
This  is  called  a  "  simple  "  remedy,  because  all  are  familiar  with 
the  article.  The  salt-rheum  may  disappear  under  such  appli- 
cations ;  but  how  many,  in  a  short  time  afterwards,  are  attacked 
with  violent  diseases,  can  never  be  known,  and  no  inquiries 
are  made  to  that  effect.  There  is  only  one  safe  general  rule, 
as  to  breakirgs-out  on  the  skin,  and  that  is,  consult  the  family 
physician  at  once.  The  next  best  plan  is,  keep  warm  in  bed, 
in  a  cool,  well-ventilated  room,  drinking  warm  teas,  into  which 
has  been  broken  the  crust  of  cold  wheaten  bread.  This  is  the 
safest,  the  best,  and  most  efficient  course  of  treatment  for  all 
breakings-out  on  the  skin.  All  external  applications  are  uncer- 
tain, worthless,  or  injurious,  as  far  as  skin  affections  are  con- 
cerned, except  so  far  as  they  tend  to  keep  the  skin  soft,  moist, 
and  natural.  Nothing  does  these  things  so  uniformly  and  so 
well  as  lukewarm  water,  or  milk  and  water,  half  and  half.  A 
little  grease  from  a  candlestick  was  advised  to  be  applied  to  a 
little  pimple  on  the  child  of  Judge  N.,  our  neighbor.  It  began, 
at  once,  to  inflame,  and  death  ensued  in  twenty-four  hours. 


624  CHURCH    VENTILATION. 


CHURCH  VENTILATION. 

MANY  persons  have  gone  to  church,  taken  cold,  gone  home, 
and  died  in  a  few  days,  from  sitting  in  an  ill-warmed  or  ill- 
ventilated  church,  arising  from  the  inattention  or  ignorance 
of  sextons,  or  indifference  of  church-officers ;  hence  tens  of 
thousands  are  interested,  to  the  extent  of  life  and  death,  in  the 
perusal  of  these  few  lines.  Perhaps  three  persons  out  of  four, 
who  attend  divine  service  on  the  Sabbath  day,  are  conscious, 
within  two  minutes  after  taking  their  seats,  that  they  have 
been  in  a  hurry ;  that  both  mind  and  body  have  been,  more  or 
less,  in  a  turmoil ;  they  have  been  hurried  in  getting  to  church 
in  time ;  the  result  is,  they  are  over-heated,  that  is,  the  body 
is  in  a  state  of  warmth  considerably  above  what  is  natural ; 
and  if,  in  this  condition,  they  sit  still,  even  for  ten  minutes, 
in  an  atmosphere  cooler  than  that  of  out-doors  in  summer,  or 
below  sixty  degrees  at  any  time,  a  cold  is  the  result,  slight,  or 
more  severe,  according  to  the  vigor  and  age  of  the  individual. 
What  would  give  but  a  triffling  cold  to  a  person  in  robust 
health,  would  induce  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  called  by  phy- 
sicians pneumonia,  in  an  old  person,  or  any  one  of  infirm  health. 
Many  a  person  has  taken  cold,  and  died  of  pneumonia  in  three 
or  four  days,  although  in  perfect  health  previously,  by  sitting  a 
few  minutes  in  a  fireless  room  in  winter  time.  The  danger  is 
still  greater  if  the  room  has  been  closed  for  several  days ;  this 
is  specially  applicable  to  houses  of  worship.  Within  a  few  min- 
utes after  the  benediction,  at  the  close  of  the  Sabbath  services, 
the  house  is  shut  up,  doors,  windows,  and  all ;  the  atmosphere 
of  the  building  has  been  saturated  with  the  breath  of  the  wor- 
shippers ;  as  it  becomes  gradually  cooler,  this  dampness  con- 
denses and  falls  towards  the  floor,  so  does  the  carbonic  acid 
gas,  which  is  what  becomes  so  unpleasantly  perceptible  on 
entering  a  sleeping-chamber  after  a  morning  walk ;  and  there 
is  experienced  a  sepulchral  dampness  and  closeness  enough  to 
chill  any  one  on  first  entering  the  church,  after  having  been 
closed  several  days.  We  once  knew  a  gentleman,  who  was 
something  of  an  invalid,  to  take  a  chill,  and  die  in  a  short  time, 
from  entering  a  warehouse  in  December,  which  had  been 
for  a  week  or  two. 


CURIOSITIES  OF  BREATHING.  625 

The  practical  conclusion  is,  that  every  church  ought  to  have 
the  windows  and  doors  open  for  several  hours,  including  the 
middle  of  the  day,  before  it  is  opened  for  service.  In  cold 
weather,  preparatory  to  the  Sabbath  service,  this  ventilation 
should  be  secured  on  Friday,  and  early  on  Saturday  mornings 
fires  should  be  built  and  steadily  kept  up,  day  and  night,  until 
the  Sabbath  services  are  concluded.  A  thermometer  should 
be  kept  hanging  about  five  feet  from  the  floor,  near  the  centre 
of  the  building,  and  the  mercury  should  be  kept  at  about 
sixty-five  or  seventy  degrees  in  fire-time  of  year,  —  better 
seventy  than  under  sixty-five. 


CURIOSITIES  OF  BREATHING. 

THE  taller  men  are,  other  things  being  equal,  the  more  lungs 
they  have,  and  the  greater  number  of  cubic  inches  of  air  they 
can  take  in  or  deliver  at  a  single  breath.  It  is  generally 
thought  that  a  man's  lungs  are  sound  and  well-developed,  in 
proportion  to  his  girth  around  the  chest ;  yet  observation 
shows  that  slim  men,  as  a  rule,  will  run  faster  and  farther,  with 
less  fatigue,  having  more  wind  than  stout  men.  If  two  persons 
are  taken,  in  all  respects  alike,  except  that  one  measures 
twelve  inches  more  around  the  chest  than  the  other,  the  one 
having  the  excess  will  not  deliver  more  air  at  one  full  breath, 
by  mathematical  measurement,  than  the  other. 

The  more  air  a  man  receives  into  his  lungs  in  ordinary 
breathing,  the  more  healthy  he  is  likely  to  be,  because  an  im- 
portant object  in  breathing  is  to  remove  impurities  from  the 
blood.  Each  breath  is  drawn  pure  into  the  lungs ;  on  its  out- 
going, the  next  instant  it  is  so  impure,  so  perfectly  destitute 
of  nourishment,  that,  if  re-breathed  without  any  admixture  of 
a  purer  atmosphere,  the  man  would  die.  Hence,  one  of  the 
conditions  necessary  to  secure  a  high  state  of  health  is,  that 
the  rooms  in  which  we  sleep  should  be  constantly  receiving 
new  supplies  of  fresh  air  through  open  doors,  windows,  or 
fireplaces. 

If  a  person's  lungs  are  not  well-developed  the  health  will  be 
imperfect;  but  the  development  may  be  increased  several 
inches,  in  a  few  months,  by  daily  out-door  runnings  with  the 


626  ONE  ACRE. 

mouth  closed,  beginning  with  twenty  yards  and  back,  at  a 
time,  increasing  ten  yards  every  week,  until  a  hundred  are 
gone  over,  thrice  a  day.  A  substitute  for  ladies,  and  persons 
in  cities,  is  running  up  stairs  with  the  mouth  closed,  which 
compels  very  deep  inspirations,  in  a  natural  way,  at  the  end  of 
the  journey. 

As  consumptive  people  are  declining,  each  week  is  witness 
to  their  inability  to  deliver  as  much  air,  at  a  single  out-breath- 
ing, as  the  week  before ;  hence,  the  best  way  to  keep  the  fell 
disease  at  bay  is  to  maintain  lung  development. 

It  is  known  that  in  large  towns,  ten  thousand  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  sea,  the  deaths  by  consumption  are  ten  times  less 
than  in  places  nearly  on  a  level  with  the  sea.  Twenty-five  per- 
sons die  of  consumption  in  the  city  of  New  York  where  only  two 
die  of  that  disease  in  the  city  of  Mexico.  All  know  that  con- 
sumption does  not  greatly  prevail  in  hilly  countries,  and  in  high 
situations.  One  reason  of  this  is,  because  there  is  more  ascend- 
ing exercise,  increasing  deep  breathing  ;  besides,  the  air  being 
more  rarified,  larger  quantities  are  instinctively  taken  into  the 
lungs,  to  answer  the  requirements  of  the  system,  thus,  at  every 
breath,  keeping  up  a  high  development.  Hence,  the  hill 
should  be  sought  by  consumptives,  and  not  low,  flat  situations. 


ONE    ACRE. 

ONE  of  the  most  general  causes  of  unthrift  to  farmers,  as 
well  as  reasons  why  many  persons  who  retire  to  the  country 
to  spend  the  evening  of  their  days,  after  having  accumulated 
a  fortune  in  the  city,  and  soon  tire  or  become  dissatisfied,  is 
the  unwise  grasping  for  too  much  land.  The  farmer  wants 
from  the  first  to  secure  enough  to  be  a  little  fortune  for  each 
child,  by  the  rise  in  price.  The  citizen  cannot  rid  himself  of 
ideas  about  profit  and  loss  ;  and  his  mind  will  run  on  the  fact, 
that  if  he  gets  a  good  slice  of  land,  it  may  turn  out  that  he  can 
divide  it  into  town  lots  in  a  few  years,  and  realize  an  immense 
percentage  ;  but  while  he  is  waiting  for  a  town,  a  messenger 
comes  to  say,  "You  are  wanted  "  — for  the  last  great  account ! 
The  young  farmer,  after  working  out  a  little  lifetime  in  trying 
to  pay  interest,  wakes  up  some  morning  to  find  that  he  has 


ONE  ACRE. 


627 


already  paid  more  for  his  farm  than  it  is  worth,  and  is  owing  a 
considerable  amount  on  it  besides  ;  for  the  "  rise  "  never  came ! 
Let  the  merchant  remember  that  going  to  the  country  will  kill 
him  all  the  sooner,  if  he  does  not,  at  the  same  time,  go  to 
work  ;  that  the  vexations  attendant  on  a  large  place,  which  is 
equivalent  to  embarking  in  a  new  business,  one  about  which 
he  knows  almost  nothing,  will  inevitably  produce  a  disqui- 
etude of  mind,  and  at  length  a  general  irritation  of  temper, 
many  fold  more  injurious  to  his  well-being,  than  if  he  had  re- 
mained in  business.  As  much  work  can  be  profitably  expend- 
ed on  one  acre  of  arable  soil,  as  any  retired  merchant  ought 
to  perform  in  twelve  months.  And  there  are  farmers,  wise 
beyond  their  day,  who,  by  expending  on  one  acre  the  labor 
which  others  have  diffused  over  twenty,  have  saved  more 
money,  lived  more  quietly,  enjoyed  more  happiness,  and  rev- 
elled in  more  luscious  good  health.  By  what  follows,  it  may 
be  seen  how  a  man  made  money  for  two  successive  years,  by 
cultivating  one  acre  of  land  well ;  planting  potatoes  the  first 
year,  following  them  with  wheat :  — 


Dr. 


Or. 


POTATOES. 

To  12  loads  manure,  .  .  .  $10  00 
Hauling  and  spreading  same,  .  3  00 
Ploughing  in  potatoes,  .  8  75 

114  bushels  seed,  at  90  cents,     10  35 
Hoe-harrowing  and  hoeing,      .    3  25 
Digging  and  putting  in  cellar,    24  874 
Hauling  to  market  (10  miles),     6  25 

WHEAT. 

Harrowing, 1  50 

Seeding, 874 

14  bushels  seed,  at  $1.30,  .  .  1  95 
Cradling  and  hauling  in,  .  .  .  2  50 
Threshing  and  cleaning,  .  .  2  50 
Hauling  to  market  (2  miles),  .  75 


To  218  bushels  potatoes  at  97 

cents, 

Tops  as  manure,       .... 
31  bushels  wheat,  at  $1.25, 

1  ton  straw, 

Chaff, 


$211  46 
.  3  00 

.    38  75 

.   8  00 

1  00 


Cr., 
Dr., 


Interest  on  land,  17  months, 


$272  21 
76  05 

$186  16 
2  75 

$183  41 


$76  05 


The  land  was  a  good  loam,  with  a  light  clover  sod.  The 
manure  was  spread  on  the  sod,  and  ploughed  down  with  the 
potatoes,  in  every  third  (narrow)  furrow.  The  seed  was  the 
common  Mercer,  planted  as  early  as  convenient,  and  dug 
ditto  ;  no  sign  of  rot.  The  wheat  was  the  common  blue-stem. 
The  potatoes  were  ploughed  out  every  third  furrow,  and  the 
ground  was  ploughed  regularly,  and  harrowed  down  for  wheat. 


628  SYMPTOMS. 

Let  all  who  seek  fortune  or  health  in  farming  remember  to 
purchase  no  more  land  than  they  can  pay  for,  and  no  more 
than  they  can  easily  cultivate  with  the  force  they  have  ;  other- 
wise, irritations,  vexations,  and  disappointments  will  eat  out 
their  health,  and  squander  their  money. 


SYMPTOMS. 

I  SUPPOSE  that,  in  the  course  of  my  medical  career,  I  have 
received,  literally,  thousands  of  letters  similar  to  the  following, 
which  came  to  hand  April  12,  1866,  from  a  gentleman  of  posi- 
tion, of  a  superior  education,  and  of  high  culture :  "  On  ac- 
count of  business  pertaining  to  my  profession,  I  have  been 
prevented  from  seeing  you  for  several  months.  I  am  happy  to 
inform  you  that  I  am  improving  ;  I  have  felt  better  for  the  last 
three  months  than  I  have  for  two  years.  I  cannot  be  thank- 
ful enough  for  the  instructions  received  from  you.  I  have 
been  busy,  very  busy,  all  this  winter.  I  can  stand  the  cold 
nearly  as  well  as  ever.  I  have  not  taken  a  particle  of  medi- 
cine since  last  December,  except  what  you  gave  me  (half  a 
dozen  pills).  My  throat  is  nearly  well.  I  must  again  thank 
you  for  your  treatment.  You  taught  me  how  to  live,  which  I 
never  knew  before." 

It  may  be  instructive  to  make  some  comments  on  this  case. 
This  gentleman  had  made  application  six  months  before,  had 
been  heard  from  once,  and  not  seen  at  all.  He  complained  of 

1.  Burning  and  dry  ness  in  the  throat. 

2.  On  first  rising  in  the  morning  his  head  was  dull,  with 
running  from  the  nose  and  dizziness. 

3.  Coughing  for  two  hours  after  breakfast. 

4.  Shifting  pains  in  the  body. 

5.  Raw  sensation  in  the  stomach. 

6.  Continued  desire  to  eat. 

7.  Pain  on  the  right  side. 

8.  Pains  back  of  the  neck,  extending  to  the  head ;  when  out 
of  doors  the  wind  seems  to  concentrate  there. 

9.  Constipation. 

10.  Bilious. 

11.  Headache. 

12.  Belching. 

13.  Pains  in  breast. 


ELEMENTS  OF  FOOD.  629 

The  written  opinion  (always  given)  in  this  case  was,  "  You 
have  liver  complaint,  constipation,  and  dyspepsia,  reacting  on 
one  another,  and  you  can  get  well,  because  your  lungs  are  per- 
fectly sound.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  of  your  regaining 
your  health,  and  living  man}7  years." 

The  first  important  step  in  leading  to  this  gentleman's  res- 
toration was,  relieving  the  mind  of  those  depressing  forebod- 
ings of  a  dreaded  disease,  by  showing  him  that  it  could  not 
exist.  The  second  was,  not  only  in  showing  him  the  impolicy 
of  abandoning  his  profession  even  temporarily,  but  that  it  was 
important  for  him  to  follow  it  with  a  new  energy,  to  have  his 
mind  fully  occupied  with  it,  even  to  be  a  little  driven.  It  is 
almost  impossible  for  an  active,  cultivated  mind,  to  get  well 
of  any  serious  ailment,  if  the  patient  is  placed  in  a  condition 
which  allows  him  to  lounge,  and  loll,  and  mope  about,  hanging 
about  the  house,  the  mind  all  the  time  reverting  to  the  bodily 
ailments,  going  round  and  round,  in  the  same  track,  as  in  a 
horse-mill. 

Third.  The  mode  of  a  man's  life  as  to  eating,  sleeping, 
clothing,  exercise,  and  employment  of  time. 

Fourth.  A  pill  or  two  a  month  to  relieve  the  system  of  what 
clogged  the  working  of  the  machinery,  until  it  could  get  a  fair 
start,  and  then  to  rely  on  general  hygienic  rules  of  life. 


ELEMENTS  OF  FOOD. 

THE  ultimate  ingredients  of  all  food  are  carbon  to  warm, 
and  nitrogen  to  make  flesh.  Some  have  no  carbon,  others  no 
nitrogen ;  some  have  both  in  varying  proportions :  all  have 
water,  or  waste,  from  five  to  ninety  per  cent.  The  table  below 
is  the  result  of  the  researches  of  the  ablest  chemists  of  the 
age.  The  amount  of  solid  matter  in  an  article  of  food,  does 
not  mean  that  amount  of  nutriment,  for  a  portion  of  it  may  be 
woody  fibre,  or  waste,  or  lime,  chalk,  iron,  or  other  mineral. 
The  cipher  indicates  that  not  one  per  cent,  of  the  element  is 
found ;  n.  a.,  not  ascertained ;  blanks  mean  no  published  or 
reliable  statements  have  been  made.  The  more  water,  the 
more  waste,  for  even  woody  fibre  and  iron  have  their  essential 
uses  in  the  system.  This,  and  other  good  tables  in  this  vol- 


630 


ELEMENTS    OF  FOOD. 


ume,  should  be  regarded  as  merely  approximative  ;  they  are 
not  so  much  intended  to  live  by,  as  for  guidance  in  diseased 
conditions;  for  example,  if  constipated,  it  is  better  to  use  rough 
food,  such  as  has  much  waste  and  little  nutriment,  as  fruits, 
berries,  and  the  like :  concentrated  food,  as  boiled  rice,  is  best 
for  loose  bowels ;  syrups,  and  oils,  and  milk,  cause  biliousness 
and  fevers  ;  sours,  as  berries,  fruits,  and  cold  slaw,  cure  fevers. 
It  is  safer,  however,  especially  in  health,  to  eat  by  instinct 
rather  than  by  rules  or  scientific  tables. 


In  100  parts  of,  there  is  percentage  of, 

Solid 
Matter. 

Water. 

Carbon. 

Nitrogen. 

88 

12 

36 

o 

28 

80 

9 

o 

25 

75 

n.  a. 

82 

18 

36 

n.  a. 

100 

0 

77 

o 

83 

17 

66 

n.  a. 

68 

32 

31 

n.  ti. 

87 

14 

38 

n.  a. 

20 

80 

10 

3 

25 

75 

10 

8 

2 

98 

n.  a. 

8 

92 

0 

12 

88 

o 

25 

75 

3 

97 

90 

10 

43 

0 

20 

80 

46 

54 



20 

80 

Ficrs. 

84 

16 

18 

81 

100 

0 

79 

0 

92 

7 

0 

0 

37 

84 

16 

37 

40 

100 

70 

0 

13 

87 

8 

92 

13 

86 

100 

77 

Oats,      

79 

21 

40 

2 

93 

7 

Oysters,     .     

13 

87 

36 

Peas,  

84 

16 

24 

76 

11 

__ 

20 

80 

16 

84 

Poultry,  

23 

77 

Rve.  . 

83 

17 

39 

2 

42 

0 

Starch,  average,       

84 

16 

36 

0 

Wheat. 

86 

14 

39 

2 

BILIOUSNESS.  631 


BILIOUSNESS. 

BILIOUSNESS,  is  a  greater  amount  of  bile  in  the  blood  than  is 
natural ;  the  result  of  which  is,  the  eyes  and  the  skin  begin  to 
wear  a  yellow  appearance,  while  various  other  symptoms  man- 
ifest themselves  according  to  the  temperament,  habits,  and 
peculiarities  of  the  individual.  One  has  sick  headache ;  anoth- 
er complains  of  a  want  of  appetite,  sometimes  loathing  the 
very  appearance  of  food ;  a  third  has  cold  feet  and  hands ;  a 
fourth  has  chilly  sensations,  involving  the  whole  body,  or  run- 
ning up  and  down  the  back ;  a  fifth  is  costive :  women  become 
hysterical,  and  laugh,  cry,  or  talk ;  while  men  are  moody,  peev- 
ish, or  morose.  Bile  is  naturally  of  a  bright  yellow  color,  but 
as  a  man  becomes  more  bilious,  it  grows  darker,  and  is  at 
length  as  black  as  tar,  causing  a  state  of  mind,  which  the  old 
Romans  called  atrability,  "  atra  "  meaning  w  black  ;  "  a  scowl  is 
on  the  countenance,  and  the  person  is  ill-natured  and  fretful, 

—  finding  fault  with    everybody   and    everything.      Hence, 
when  a  man  is  cross,  he  is  bilious,  and  ought  to  be  pitied,  and 
at  the  same  time  be  made  to  take  an  emetic.     The  ill-natured 
are  never  well ;  they  are  w  bilious,"  the  system  is  clogged,  the 
machinery  does  not  work  well ;  and  both  mind  and  body  are 
disordered.     The  safest  and  best  method  of  getting  rid  of  bil- 
iousness, is  steady  work  in  the  open  air,  for  six  or  eight  hours 
every  day,  working  or  exercising  to  the  extent  of  keeping  up 
a  gentle  moisture  on  the  skin  :  this  moisture  conveys  the  bile 
away   out  of  the  system.     The  same   result  will  be  accom- 
plished, but  not  so  well,  by  a  good  steam  bath,  or  by  wrapping 
up  in  bed,  drinking  hot  teas,  —  thus  getting  up  a  perspiration, 

—  but  the  atmosphere  of  the  room  should  be  pure,  arid  the 
diet  for  several  days  should  consist  of  coarse  bread  and  fruits. 
Medicines  which  act  on  the  liver  will  do  the  same  thing,  but 
they  should  be  advised  by  the  physician,  when  other  means 
have  failed. 

The  office  of  the  liver  is  to  withdraw  the  bile  from  the 
blood ;  it  is  the  largest  workshop  of  the  body,  and  is  at  the 
right  side,  about  the  lower  edge  of  the  ribs.  When  it  does 
not  do  its  work,  it  is  said  to  be  torpid,  asleep,  and  medicines 
are  given  to  stimulate  it,  —  wake  it  up,  make  it  act,  work 


632 


FOOD  FOR   CATTLE. 


faster  than  common,  so  as  to  throw  off  the  excess  of  bile. 
When  it  does  not  withdraw  or  separate  the  bile  from  the 
blood,  the  skin  grows  yellow,  also  the  whites  of  the  eyes,  and 
the  man  has  the  "  yellow  jaundice."  When  it  separates  the 
bile  from  the  blood,  but  retains  it  within  itself,  constipation 
ensues,  appetite  is  lost,  spirits  become  despondent,  and  the 
person  is  languid,  lazy,  fretful,  and  irritable.  The  liver  is,  in 
a  sense,  like  a  sponge,  and  the  bile  may  be  pressed  out  of  it, 
as  water  out  of  a  sponge,  by  pressing  the  ball  of  the  hand 
dver  the  region  of  the  liver  downwards,  from  hip  to  pit  of 
stomach,  two  or  three  minutes  at  a  time,  several  times  a  day  ; 
this  is  a  good  remedy  in  dyspepsia,  and  also  relieves  the 
stomach  of  wind,  giving  immediate  and  grateful  relief  some- 
times. 


FOOD   FOR    CATTLE. 

SERIOUS  sickness,  dyspepsia,  and  a  life-long  train  of  ills, 
sometimes  follow  the  use  of  flesh  from  poor,  old,  hard-worked, 
and  diseased  animals  ;  it  is,  then,  of  some  importance  to  know 
how  to  feed  and  fatten  them  properly  and  to  the  best  advan- 
tage ;  and  to  do  this,  the  first  essential  step  is  to  know  the 
relative  value,  the  nutritiousness  of  various  kinds  of  food,  so 
that  the  meat  when  it  appears  on  the  table  may  be  fat,  healthy, 
tender,  and  juicy.  The  following  table  is  the  result  of  care- 
fully conducted  experiments,  made  and  corroborated  by  the 
experiments  of  eminent  chemists,  and  is  therefore  reliable,  as 
being  approximately  correct  in  the  main.  One  hundred 
pounds  of  good  hay  affords  as  much  nourishment  to  cattle 
which  feed  upon  it,  as 


11)8. 

43  of  Wheat, 

44  dried  Peas, 
46     "     Beans, 
49     "     Rye, 
51     "     Barley, 
56     "     Corn, 
59     "     Oats, 

64    "     Buckwheat 
64    "     Linseed  Oil 
Cake, 


Ibs. 

68  Acorns 

96  Red  Clover  Hay, 
105  Wheat  Bran, 
109  Rye  Bran, 
153  Pea  Straw, 
153  Pea  Chaff, 
167  Wheat  or  Oat 

Chaff, 

170  Rye  or  Barley, 
175  Raw  Potatoes, 


Ibs. 

195  Boiled  Potatoes, 
220  Oat  Straw, 
262  Ruta  Baga, 
276  Green  Corn, 
280  Carrots, 
339  Man.  Wurtzel, 
346  Field  Beets, 
355  Rye  Straw, 
504  Turnips. 


COURTING.  633 

FOOD   FOB   COWS. 

German  chemists  have  found  the  relative  value  of  food  for 
cows  giving  milk,  to  be  as  follows.  One  hundred  pounds  of 
good  hay  contains  as  much  nourishment  as, 

26  Ibs.  Peas,  250  Ibs.  Pea  Straw. 

25     "     Beans,  300    "    Barley  Straw, 

50    "     Oats,  300    "    Oat  Straw, 

60     "     Oil  Cake,  350     "    Siberian  Cabbage, 

80     "     Clover  Hay,  400     "    Rye  Straw, 

80     "     Vetches,   '  400     "    Wheat  Straw, 

200     "     Potatoes,  460    "    Beet  Root  with  leaves. 

The  English  give  their  cows,  weighing  a  thousand  pounds, 
eight  pounds  of  good  hay  thrice  a  day  in  winter.  A  cow, 
which  was  given  twenty-seven  pounds  of  hay  daily,  yielded, 
in  four  days,  one  quart  more  of  milk  than  when  she  con- 
sumed only  twenty-one  pounds  of  hay :  that  is,  the  extra 
twenty-four  pounds  of  hay,  in  four  days,  gave  one  quart  of 
milk  extra.  While  horses  require  eight  per  cent,  of  their 
weight  good  English  hay  a  day,  milch  cows  require  only  two 
and  three  quarters  per  cent.  A  milch  cow  will  not  eat  more 
than  twenty-five  or  thirty  pounds  of  hay  a  day,  and  if  more 
milk  is  desired,  it  must  be  obtained  by  giving  her  richer  food, 
—  that  containing  more  oil,  albumen,  &c. 


COURTING. 

IN  the  Old  World  marriage  is  a  matter  of  convenience,  or  an 
out  and  out  business  transaction  ;  and  family  is  bartered  for 
funds,  or  an  improvement  in  the  pecuniary  affairs  of  both 
parties  is  aimed  at.  In  our  own  country  it  is  literally  a  "  love 
affair,"  without  rhyme  or  reason,  sense  or  system ;  it  is  a 
blissful,  mutual  absorption  of  two  hearts  into  one  —  for  a 
while  anyhow.  Perhaps  if  it  were  made  a  matter  of  hygiene, 
there  would  be  eventually  a  greater  amount  of  happiness  and 
solid  prosperity  in  any  community.  A  sickly  wife  has  many 
a  time  blasted  the  ambition  of  an  industrious  and  enterprising 
young  man,  whose  aim  was  to  rise  in  his  business  and  become 
one  of  the  leading  men  of  his  calling. 


634  NUTRITIOUSNESS   OF  FOOD. 

But  in  the  very  first  year  sickness  came,  —  the  young  wife 
could  not  attend  to  her  domestic  affairs ;  the  servants  became 
remiss,  indifferent,  and  wasteful  ;  the  physician  was  called  in ; 
the  husband  himself  was  obliged  to  remain  at  the  house,  and 
the  same  derangement  of  his  own  affairs  took  place  ;  and  eve- 
rywhere there  was  waste  and  expenditure,  and  loss  of  busi- 
ness and  custom.  Discouragement  came,  until,  finally,  all  that 
was  hoped  for  was  to  live  from  one  day  to  another. 

At  other  times  the  husband  became  the  invalid ;  the  support 
of  the  family  is  thrown  upon  the  wife  and  the  mother :  and 
how  many  of  them  have  worked  themselves  into  a  premature 
grave  or  into  a  lunatic  asylum,  it  is  painful  to  contemplate. 

No  sickly  person  can  honorably  marry  another  in  good 
health,  without  previously  making  a  fair  statement  of  the  cas/e. 
And  even  then,  if  a  marriage  takes  place,  a  crime  has  been 
committed  against  the  community  and  against  unborn  inno- 
cents. But  when  both  the  parties  are  sickly,  it  is  wholly  in- 
excusable, and  ought  to  be  frowned  upon  by  every  intelli- 
gent community,  however  satisfactory  the  pecuniary  condition 
of  the  parties.  They  may  be  able  to  support  themselves,  but 
they  can  give  no  guarantee  that  their  children,  diseased  in 
body  and  feeble  in  mind,  shall  not  be  a  public  charge  at  the 
hospital,  the  poorhouse,  or  an  insane  asylum.  The  best  gen- 
eral plan  for  insuring  a  healthy  and  vigorous  offspring  is  to 
make  an  antipodal  marriage,  —  to  make  as  much  of  a  cross  in 
the  physical  characteristics  as  possible.  The  city  should 
marry  the  country ;  the  black-haired  the  blonde ;  the  bilious 
temperament  the  nervous ;  the  fair-skinned  the  brunette ;  the 
stout  the  slender  ;  the  tall  the  short.  To  marry  each  its  like, 
is  to  degrade  the  race. 


NUTRITIOUSNESS  OF  FOOD. 

THE  following  table,  from  authentic  sources,  shows  the  as- 
certained per  centage  of  nutriment  in  the  common  articles  of 
table  consumption.  Boiled  rice  being  the  easiest  of  digestion, 
because  the  quickest,  is  marked  ten  ;  boiled  cabbage  is  two ; 
roast  pork,  boiled  tendon,  and  beef  suet,  requiring  five  and  a 
half  hours  to  be  digested,  would  be  one,  or  the  lowest  grade 


NUTRITIOUSNESS   OF  FOOD. 


635 


of  digestibility.  One  important  practical  bearing  of  the  table 
is,  that  the  most  nutritious  food  should  be  eaten,  as  boiled 
rice,  when  the  bowels  are  loose  ;  but  when  constipated,  that 
which  has  most  waste  should  be  eaten,  as  boiled  turnips,  be- 
cause the  more  waste,  the  greater  is  the  accumulation  of  this 
waste  in  the  lower  bowel,  which  acts  in  proportion  as  it  is 
distended  by  such  accumulation. 


Kind  of  Food. 

Preparation. 

Pr-Cent 
of  Nu- 
triment. 

Time  of 
Digestion. 

H.  M. 

Ease  ol 
Diges- 
tion. 

KKMAUKS. 

Almonds,     .     . 

Raw, 

66 

Apples,      .     • 

it 

10 

1.30 

5 

Sweet  and  mellow. 

Apricots,      .     . 

<« 

26 

Barley,      .     . 

.  Boiled, 

92 

2.00 

5 

Beans,  dry,  .    . 

.  <t 

87 

2.30 

4 

Beef,     .     .     . 

.  Roast, 

26 

3.30 

3 

Fresh,     lean,    rare, 

broiled,  digests  in  three 

Blood,     .     .     . 

22 

hours. 

Bread,  .     .     . 

•  Baked, 

80 

3.30 

3 

Cabbage,      .     . 

Boiled, 

7 

4.30 

2 

Carrots,     .     . 

M 

10 

3.15 

3 

Cherries,      .     . 

Raw, 

25 

2.00 

5 

Chickens    .    . 

.  Fricasseed, 

27 

2.45 

4 

Codfish,     .     . 

.  Boiled, 

21 

2.00 

5 

Cucumbers, 

Raw, 

2 

Eggs,    .     .     . 

.  Whipped, 

13 

1.30 

7 

Flour,  bolted,  . 

In  Bread, 

21 

Flour,  unbolted, 

« 

35 

Gooseberries,   . 

Raw, 

19 

2.00 

6 

Grapes,  .     . 

« 

27 

2.30 

6 

Haddock,     .     . 

Boiled, 

18 

2.30 

4 

Melons,      .     . 

.  Raw, 

3 

2.00 

5 

MiJk,  .... 

<( 

7 

2.15 

5 

Mutton  .     .     . 

.  Roast, 

30 

3.15 

3 

Oatmeal,      .     . 

Baked, 

74 

3.30 

3 

Oils,      .     •     . 

.  Raw, 

96 

3.30 

3 

Peas,  dry,    .     . 

Boiled, 

93 

2.30 

4 

Peaches,    .     . 

.  Raw, 

20 

2.00 

4 

Pears,   .     .     . 

« 

10 

3.30 

6 

Plums,     .     .     . 

(i 

29 

2.30 

4 

Pork,    .     .     . 

.  Roast, 

21 

5.15 

2 

Potatoes,      .     . 

Boiled, 

13 

2.30 

4 

Rice,     .     .     . 

(i 

88 

1.00 

10 

Rye  Flour,     . 

.  Baked, 

79 

3.30 

3 

Sole,  .     .     .     . 

Fried, 

21 

3.00 

4 

Soup,  Barley, 

.  Boiled, 

20 

1.30 

7 

Strawberries,   . 

Raw, 

12 

2.00 

6 

Turnips,    .     . 

.  Boiled, 

4 

3.30 

3 

Veal,      .     .      . 

Fried, 

25 

4.30 

2 

Venison,    .     . 

.  Broiled, 

22 

1.30 

7 

Wheat  bread,   . 

Baked, 

95 

3.30 

3 

Unbolted  flour. 

636 


DIGESTIBILITY  OF  FOOD. 


DIGESTIBILITY   OF   FOOD. 

THE  following  table  of  the  digestibility  of  the  most  common 
articles  of  food,  prepared  from  standard  authorities,  is  approxi- 
mately correct,  and  is  of  very  general  practical  interest :  — 


Quality.                 Preparation. 

Time  of 
Digestion. 

f  Quality.               Preparation. 

Time  of 
Digestion. 

Rice,    Boiled 

H.M. 
1  00 

Beef,  fresh,  lean,  rare,  Roasted, 

H.  M. 

Pigs'  Feet,  soused,  .  .       " 
Tripe,  soused,  ....       " 

1.00 
1.00 
1  30 

Pork,  recently  salted,  Stewed, 
Mutton,  fresh,  ....  Broiled, 
Soup,  Boiled, 

3.00 
3.00 
3  00 

Trout,  salmon,  fresh,  Boiled, 

1.30 

3  00 

Trout,  salmon,  fresh,  Fried, 

1.30 
1  30 

Aponeurosis,    ....       •• 
Dumpling,  apple,  .  .       " 

3.00 
3  00 

Apples,   sweet,    mel- 

Cake,  corn,    Baked, 

3  00 

1  30 

3  15 

Venison  Steak,    ...  Broiled, 

1  35 

3  15 

Brains,  animal,    .  .  .  Boiled, 
Sao'o                                      " 

1.45 
1  45 

Mutton,  fresh,  ....  Roasted, 

3.15 
i  it 

2  00 

Carrot,  orange,   ...  Boiled, 

3  15 

Barley,    " 

2.00 

Sausage,  fresh,    .  .  .  Broiled, 

3.30 

Milk,    " 

2.00 

Flounder,  fresh,  .  .  .  Fried, 

3  30 

Liver,  beefs,  fresh,  .  Broiled, 

2.00 
2  00 

Catfish,  fresh  " 

3.90 

3  30 

Codfish,  cured  dry,  .  Hoiled, 

2  00 

Butter,    Melted, 

3  30 

Apples,  sour,  mellow,  Raw, 
Cabbage,    with    vine- 

2.00 
2  00 

Cheese,  old,  strong,  .  Raw, 
Soup,  mutton,  ....  Boiled, 

3.30 
3.30 
3  30 

Milk,    " 

2  15 

Bread,  wheat,  fresh,  .  Baked, 

3  30 

Efo's,  fresh,  Roasted, 

2  15 

Turnips,  flat     ....  Boiled, 

3  30 

2.18 

Potatoes,  Irish,  ...       " 

3  30 

Turkey,  domestic,  .  .  Boiled, 

2  25 

Eo'i's,  fresh,  Hard  boiled, 

330 

Gelatine,    " 

2  30 

3  45 

Turkey,  domestic,  .  .  Roasted, 

2  30 

3  45 

2  10 

4  00 

2*30 

Beef,    Fried, 

4  00 

Lamb,  fresh,  Broiled, 

2  'M 

Veal,  fresh    Broiled. 

4  00 

Hash,  meat  and  vege- 
tables    Warmed, 

o  30 

Fowls,  domestic,  .  .  Roasted, 

4.00 

2.30 

bios,  and  bread,  .  .  Boiled, 

4.00 

2  30 

Heart  animal,     ...  Fried, 

4  00 

2  30 

Beef,  old,  hard,  salted,  Boiled, 

4  15 

Potatoes,  Irish,  .  .  .  Roasted, 
Cabbage,  head,    .  .  .  Raw, 

2.30 
2.30 

Soup,  marrow-bones,       " 

4.15 
4.15 

Spinal    marrow,  ani- 
mal,    Boiled, 

2  40 

Pork,  recently  salted,       " 
Veal    fresh    Fried, 

4.30 
4  30 

2  15 

4  30 

Custard,  Baked 

2  45 

4  30 

Beef,  with  salt  only,  .  Boiled, 

2  45 

4  30 

Apples,  sour,  hard,  .  Raw, 
Oysters,  fresh,    .  .    •     " 

2.50 
2  55 

Pork,  fat  and  lean,  .  .  Roasted, 
Tendon   Boiled, 

5.15 
6.30 

Eggs,  fresh,  Soft  boiled, 

3  00 

Suet,  beef,  fresh,  .  .  .       " 

5.30 

Bass,  striped,  fresh,  .  Broiled, 

3.00 

SUN-STROKE.  637 


SUN-STROKE. 

SUN-STROKE  is  an  instantaneous  inflammation  of  the  brain, 
occasioned  by  the  sun's  rays  communicating  their  heat  to  the 
structures  with  such  intensity  and  rapidity  as  to  cause  dizzi- 
ness, headache,  and  nausea  or  vomiting ;  the  patient  then  falls 
breathless,  turns  black  in  the  face,  and  dies,  unless  proper 
assistance  is  given  on  the  spot ;  which  is,  to  be  taken  to  the 
shade.  The  neck  should  be  instantly  freed  from  all  that  binds 
it ;  pour  warm  water  on  the  head,  and  dash  it  upon  the  body 
—  the  Arabs  pour  it  in  the  ears  ;  this  may  also  be  done.  It 
is  sometimes  an  hour  or  two  before  relief  is  obtained,  which  is 
ascertained  by  the  patient  becoming  more  conscious  and 
more  able  to  help  himself.  Let  him  drink  as  much  water  as 
he  desires,  if  he  can  swallow  it. 

Sun-stroke  is  prevented  by  wearing  a  silk  handkerchief  in 
the  crown  of  the  hat,  or  green  leaves,  or  a  wet  cloth  of  any 
kind ;  but  during  an  attack  warm  water  should  be  instantly 
poured  on  the  head,  or  rags  dipped  in  the  water  and  renewed 
every  minute.  The  reason  is  twofold :  the  scalp  is  dry  and 
hot,  and  the  warm  water  not  only  removes  the  dryness,  but 
carries  off  the  extra  heat  with  great  rapidity,  by  evaporation. 
Sun-stroke  is  more  common  in  the  temperate  than  in  the  torid 
zones.  It  is  more  frequent  and  fatal  in  New  York  and  Quebec 
than  in  New  Orleans  and  Havana.  Day  laborers  are  tmost 
liable  to  sun-stroke,  especially  in  proportion  as  they  use  stim- 
ulating drinks.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  strictly  temperate  person 
ever  becomes  a  victim  to  this  instantaneous  life-destroyer; 
but  excessive  exposure  to  the  direct  rays  of  a  summer's  sun, 
may  occasion  sun-stroke  in  any  individual,  in  the  proportion  as 
he  is  of  a  sedentary  occupation  or  of  delicate  health.  Such 
persons,  if  compelled  to  be  out  of  doors,  under  a  hot  summer's 
sun,  should  wear  a  soft,  loose  hat,  with  some  light,  loose  cloth 
in  the  crown  ;  have  the  neck  and  throat  bare  and  unconfined ; 
should  eat  but  little  meat,  and  live  mostly  on  coarse  bread  and 
butter,  and  berries,  ripe,  raw,  and  perfect,  without  sugar  or 
milk ;  keep  regular  hours,  and  have  abundant  sleep.  Laborers 
should  wash  the  whole  scalp  in  cold  water  several  times  a 
day,  and  keep  the  surface  of  the  body  clean  by  rubbing  it 


638  BOILS. 

with  a  damp  towel  every  night  before  going  to  bed.  Let  the 
friction  be  sufficiently  vigorous  to  cause  an  extra  redness  of 
the  skin.  It  is  being  between  two  fires  that  makes  sun-stroke 
common  in  cities  and  uncommon  on  small  islands  or  at  sea; 
because  the  brick  and  stone  pavements  give  back  almost  as 
great  a  heat  as  comes  from  the  sun. 


BOILS. 

BOILS  are  Nature's  method  of  avoiding  or  curing  disease. 
A  boil  begins  with  a  hard  lump,  which  increases  in  size,  heat, 
and  painfulness  for  about  seven  days  ;  then  it  begins  to  point, 
and  a  yellow  speck  at  the  top  is  seen.  This  spreads,  and 
finally  breaks,  discharging  more  or  less  blood  and  matter  for 
two  or  three  days,  when  the  core  comes  out,  the  pain  ceases, 
the  hollow  left  is  by  degrees  filled  up  with  new  flesh,  and  in 
about  fourteen  days  from  the  beginning  the  patient  is  well,  at 
least  of  that  one !  But  sometimes  a  second  one  breaks  out 
before  the  first  one  is  well;  or  a  dozen  or  more  appear  in 
various  parts  of  the  body,  in  various  stages. 

Job  was  covered  with  boils.  The  Romans  designated  them 
by  the  Latin  word  which  means  to  "  make  mad  "  or  ill-natured. 
Only  saints  can  be  serene  when  a  boil  is  coming  to  a  point. 
The  old  and  young,  the  vigorous  and  the  weakly,  all  are  ex- 
posed to  them ;  but  with  this  difference  :  in  the  robust  they 
run  their  course  in  about  fourteen  days,  and  get  well  of  them- 
selves. In  persons  of  feeble  constitution  a  boil  becomes  a  car- 
buncle, which  is  many  boils  springing  up  near  together.  These 
often  prove  fatal,  especially  with  those  who  use  ardent  spirits. 
The  general  treatment  is  to  call  in  a  surgeon,  and  have  it  cut 
to  the  bone  in  a  cross.  In  every  case,  keep  the  parts  moist 
all  the  time,  by  a  poultice  of  sweet  milk  and  stale  bread ;  noth- 
ing better,  safer,  or  more  handy  can  be  used ;  it  remains  moist 
longer  than  most  others,  and  is  easily  softened  and  removed 
preparatory  to  renewals,  which  should  be  made  thrice  a  day. 

Boils  are  the  result  of  impure  blood,  made  so  by  imperfect 
digestion;  or  an  excess  of  bile,  owing  to  a  torpid  liver  or  the 
want  of  sufficient  out-of-door  exercise.  They  are  not  a  sign 
of  health,  but  that  nature  is  carrying  on  a  healthful  process. 


ADULTERATIONS.  639 

A  felon  or  whitlow,  is  a  boil  formed  on  the  bone  under  the 
whitleather  or  broad  tendons,  which  are  so  impervious  that 
the  yellow  matter  cannot  be  worked  out  through  them  ;  hence, 
if  not  promptly  cut  down  upon,  to  let  out  the  yellow  matter,  it 
must  get  well  by  the  slow  and  fearfully  painful  process  of  re- 
absorption.  As  to  a  common  boil,  all  that  should  be  done  is  to 
render  the  process  of  cure  less  painful  by  moist  poultices,  by 
living  on  coarse  bread,  ripe,  raw  fruits,  berries,  and  tomatoes 
in  their  natural  state,  using  no  sweets,  oils,  meats,  or  spirits. 
If  the  constitution  is  feeble,  beef  soups  and  other  nourishing 
food  is  necessary.  Be  out  of  doors  ;  keep  the  skin  clean,  and 
have  the  bowels  act  freely  every  day.  The  Saxon  name, 
"  Bile,"  is  the  best  term,  because  it  is  really  nature's  process 
of  discharging  extra  bile  from  the  system,  with  other  hurtful 
humors  which  ought  to  be  out  of  it.  If  boils  follow  fever  or 
other  disease,  it  shows  that  they  were  not  treated  with  suffi- 
cient activity. 


ADULTERATIONS. 

THE  times  and  principles  of  men  are  so  out  of  joint,  that 
when  we  sit  down  to  a  table,  and  suppose  we  are  eating  a  par- 
ticular dish,  the  chances  are  ten  to  one  that  we  are  not  eating 
that  at  all,  but  are  eating  something  else,  unless  we  are  par- 
taking of  some  native  product  of  which  we  know  everything ; 
such  as  our  own  vegetables,  fruits,  and  fresh  meats.  Eggs 
have  not  yet  been  counterfeited,  but  as  to  milk,  where  is  any 
in  our  large  cities  that  is  not  a  mixture  ?  A  hundred  mix- 
tures make  our  ground  coffee,  and  our  tea  is  made  over  after 
it  has  been  used  at  the  tables  of  hotels.  There  is  a  substance 
called  terra  alba,  or  white  earth,  brought  from  Ireland,  for  two 
and  a  half  cents  a  pound,  which  enters  largely  into  many  of 
our  confections  ;  and  when  sugar  costs  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
cents  a  pound,  the  temptation  to  adulterate  is  scarcely  to  be 
resisted  by  unprincipled  shopkeepers.  The  body  of  candies, 
and  the  coating  of  lozenges  and  almonds,  are  made  of  this  in 
many  cases,  as  it  is  whiter  than  plaster,  and  is  largely  used 
in  the  adulteration  of  flour.  In  one  ounce  of  lozenges,  two 
thirds  of  the  weight,  when  dissolved  in  water,  was  nothing 
but  this  white  earth,  and  the  lozenge  did  not  contain  an  atom 


640  DEATH  IN-DOORS. 

of  sfigar  of  any  kind.  Gum  arabic  is  too  costly  for  pure  gum- 
drops  to  be  made  to  advantage,  so  a  substitute  is  made,  which, 
although  it  is  beautiful  to  look  at,  is  very  poisonous. 

Licorice  drops  are  made  for  the  trade  of  the  poorest  kind 
of  sugar  and  lampblack,  and  merely  flavored  with  licorice. 
Twenty  parts  of  licorice  and  eighty  per  cent,  of  white  earth 
are  dexterously  mixjed,  and  sent  to  the  south  and  west  as  pure 
licorice.  Traders  do  not  hesitate  to  use  the  most  virulent 
poisons  to  make  pickles  appear  fresh  and  green ;  while  it  is  a 
notorious  fact,  that  skilled  persons  can,  by  a  combination  of 
drugs,  make  almost  any  liquor  known,  and  which  will  so 
nearly  resemble  the  taste  of  the  true  article  that  experts  are 
deceived.  To  escape  the  impositions,  it  is  not  sufficient  that 
a  man  have  the  utmost  confidence  in  his  grocer,  for  he,  too, 
may  be  profoundly  deceived.  Let  every  family  have  the 
courage  to  make  its  own  bread,  to  prepare  its  vinegar,  to  brew 
its  own  beer,  and  express  its  own  wines,  if  they  must  be  had ; 
to  buy  its  own  coffee  m  its  green  state ;  to  put  away  its  own 
pickles  ;  to  prepare  its  own  sweetmeats ;  and  as  to  every  com- 
pound article  of  food  which  comes  to  the  table,  let  it  do  its 
own  mixing. 


DEATH  IN-DOORS. 

MULTITUDES  of  persons  have  a  great  horror  of  going  out  of 
doors,  for  fear  of  taking  cold  ;  if  it  is  a  little  damp,  or  a  little 
windy,  or  a  little  cold,  they  wait,  and  wait,  and  wait ;  mean- 
while weeks  and  even  months  pass  away,  and  they  never, 
during  that  whole  time,  breathe  a  single  breath  of  pure  air. 
The  result  is,  they  become  so  enfeebled  that  their  constitu- 
tions have  no  power  of  resistance  ;  the  least  thing  in  the  world 
gives  them  a  cold ;  even  going  from  one  room  to  another,  and 
before  they  know  it  they  have  a  cold  all  the  time,  and  this  is 
nothing  more  or  less  than  consumption ;  whereas,  if  an  oppo- 
site practice  had  been  followed,  of  going  out  for  an  hour  or 
two  every  day,  regardless  of  the  weather,  so  it  is  not  actually 
falling  rain,  a  very  different  result  would  have  taken  place. 
The  truth  is,  the  more  a  person  is  out  of  doors,  the  less  easily 
does  he  take  cold.  It  is  a  widely-known  fact,  that  persons 
who  camp  out  every  night,  or  sleep  under  a  tree  for  weeks  to- 
gether, seldom  take  cold  at  all. 


FATUITY  OF  OLD  AGE.  641 

Very  many  of  our  bad  colds,  and  those  of  a  most  fatal  form, 
are  taken  in  the  house,  and  not  out  of  doors ;  taken  by  remov- 
ing parts  of  clothing  too  soon  after  coming  into  the  house,  or 
lying  down  on  a  bed  or  sofa  when  in  a  tired  or  exhausted  con- 
dition, from  having  engaged  too  vigorously  in  domestic  em- 
ployments. Many  a  pie  has  cost  an  industrious  man  a  hun- 
dred dollars.  A  human  life  has  many  a  time  paid  for  an  apple 
dumpling.  When  our  wives  get  to  work,  they  become  so  in- 
terested in  it  that  they  find  themselves  utterly  exhausted 
before  they  know  it ;  their  ambition  to  complete  a  thing,  to  do 
their  work  well,  sustains  them  till  it  is  completed.  The  men- 
tal and  physical  condition  is  one  of  exhaustion  when  a  breath 
of  air  will  give  a  cold,  to  settle  in  the  joints,  to  wake  up  next 
day  with  inflammatory  rheumatism,  or  with  a  feeling  of  stiff- 
ness or  soreness,  as  if  they  had  been  pounded  in  a  bag ;  or  a 
sore  throat  to  worry  and  trouble  them  for  months ;  or  lung 
fever  to  put  them  in  the  grave  in  less  than  a  week. 

Our  wives  should  work  by  the  day,  if  they  must  work  at  all, 
and  not  by  the  job ;  it  is  more  economical  in  the  end  to  see 
how  little  work  they  can  do  in  an  hour,  instead  of  how  much. 
It  is  slow,  steady,  continuous  labor  which  brings  health,  and 
strength,  and  a  good  digestion.  Fitful  labor  is  ruinous  to  all. 


FATUITY  OF  OLD   AGE. 

IT  is  scarcely  possible  to  conceive  of  a  more  terrible  calam- 
ity than  to  be  old  and  have  no  mind  —  not  even  the  intelli- 
gence to  know  your  own  child  !  Mumblings  and  muttering*, 
ceaseless  and  incoherent.  To  have  no  understanding  beyond 
that  of  the  animal,  —  to  eat,  and  drink,  and  sleep,  —  dead  to 
yourself,  and  more  than  dead  to  all  your  kindred.  It  may  come 
by  degrees,  it  may  come  like  the  lightning's  flash.  It  was 
told  me  once  of  one  of  the  greatest  clerical  minds  in  America, 
that  in  the  midst  of  a  discourse,  in  which  the  whole  congre- 
gation was  rapt  with  an  intensity  of  attention  scarcely  to  be 
paralleled,  —  for  his  was  a  giant  mind  among  giants,  —  he 
suddenly  placed  his  hand  upon  his  forehead,  and  bowing  it 
forward,  exclaimed,  "  God,  as  with  a  sponge,  has  blotted  out 
my  mind." 


642  PHYSICAL   CULTIVATION. 

This  fatuity  is  called,  in  medical  language,  mollifies  cerebri, 
—  softening  of  the  brain.  It  is  hopelessly  incurable.  M.  Duf- 
fie  and  Tom  Moore  thus  perished.  It  may  be  instructive  to 
the  general  reader  to  know  who  are  most  liable  to  this  terrible 
calamity.  The  great  general  cause  of  fatuity  is  a  want  of 
proper  proportion  of  physical  and  mental  exercise.  The 
class  which  furnishes  the  largest  number  of  such  unfortu- 
nates, is  that  which  thinks  much  and  works  but  little,  such 
as  clergymen,  lawyers,  poets,  married  people  who  have  no 
children,  married  people  who  do  not  keep  house,  but  board 
out,  and  have  nothing  to  do  but  live  on  their  income.  One  of 
the  greatest  curses  that  can  fall  upon  a  man  in  this  life,  is  to 
be  old,  and  to  be  able  to  live  without  doing  anything,  and  thus 
living.  If  any  woman  reader  of  mine,  over  fifty,  wishes  to 
avoid  fatuity,  let  her  be  careful  not  to  place  herself  in  a  sit- 
uation which  will  release  her  from  the  cares  and  duties  of 
housekeeping.  No  man  can  say  that  he  will  not  die  fatuitous, 
despite  of  his  iron  constitution,  who  studies  a  great  deal  and 
devotes  but  little  time  to  daily  exercise ;  the  only  safeguard 
any  student,  after  fifty,  has  against  it  is,  that  from  youth  to 
the  hour  of  his  death  he  shall  spend  several  hours  every  day 
in  active  bodily  employment  out  of  doors.  Remember,  the 
only  certain,  the  only  infallible  preventive  of  fatuity,  is  daily 
physical  exercise  from  early  life. 


PHYSICAL   CULTIVATION. 

ALL  must  admit  that  the  bodily  habits  and  occupations  of 
the  young  have  a  material  influence  on  their  physical  develop- 
ment. Contrast  the  printer  with  the  blacksmith,  the  tailor 
with  the  hunter,  the  working  farmer  with  the  student.  If 
near  relations  marry  each  other  for  a  very  few  generations, 
the  invariable  result  is  bodily  deformity  and  mental  imbecility, 
and  if  persevered  in,  the  very  race  and  name  die  out.  This  is 
one  of  the  important  causes  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  nations ; 
it  is  a  law  of  nature,  whose  infraction  is  visited  with  punish- 
ment, —  signal,  infallible.  The  practical  remedy  is  opposite 
marriages :  the  city  should  marry  the  country,  the  south  the 
north ;  the  sea-shore  should  marry  the  interior,  the  plain 


HOW  TO  SIT.  643 

should  wed  the  mountain-top ;  districts  should  marry  wide 
asunder.  This  may  be  the  reason  that  the  patriarchs  were 
sent  far  from  home  to  marry.  It  is  very  certain  that  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  physical  man,  with  a  view  to  its  more  perfect 
development,  on  rational  principles,  would  elevate  the  race 
bodily,  mentally,  morally.  A  vigorous  body,  rightly  educated, 
gives  a  vigorous  intellect ;  and  give  this  intellect  Bible  teach- 
ing, and  it  becomes  the  highest  type  of  a  Christian  —  the 
Christian  from  principle ;  the  only  man  in  the  wide  universe 
who  can  be  depended  on. 


HOW  TO   SIT. 

ALL  consumptive  people,  and  all  afflicted  with  spinal  de- 
formities, sit  habitually  crooked,  with  one  or  more  curves  of 
the  body.  There  was  a  time,  in  all  these,  when  the  body  had 
its  natural  erectness,  when  there  was  the  first  departure  on 
the  road  to  death.  The  make  of  our  chairs,  especially  that 
great  barbarism,  the  unwieldy  and  disease-engendering  rock- 
ing chair,  favors  these  diseases,  and  undoubtedly,  in  some 
instances,  leads  to  bodily  habits  which  originate  the  ailments 
just  named,  to  say  nothing  of  piles,  fistula,  and  the  like.  The 
painful  or  sore  feeling  which  many  are  troubled  with  inces- 
santly, for  years,  at  the  extremity  of  the  back-bone,  is  the 
result  of  sitting  in  such  a  position  that  it  rests  upon  the  seat 
of  the  chair,  at  a  point  several  inches  forward  of  the  chair 
back.  A  physiological  chair,  one  which  shall  promote  the 
health,  and  preserve  the  human  form  erect  and  manly  as  our 
Maker  made  it,  should  have  the  back  straight,  at  right-angles 
with  the  seat ;  the  seat  itself  not  being  over  eight  inches 
deep.  A  chair  of  this  kind  will  do  more  towards  correcting 
the  lounging  habits  of  our  youth  than  multitudes  of  parental 
lecturings ,-  for  then,  if  they  are  seated  at  allr  they  must  sit 
erect,  otherwise  there  is  no  seat-hold. 


644  BRAIN  AND   THOUGHT. 


BRAIN  AND   THOUGHT. 

RICHMOND  mentions  the  case  of  a  woman  whose  brain  was 
exposed  in  consequence  of  the  removal  of  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  its  bony  covering  by  disease.  He  says  he  repeatedly 
made  pressure  on  the  brain,  and  each  time  suspended  all  feel- 
ings and  all  intellect,  Avhich  were  instantly  restored  when  the 
pressure  was  withdrawn.  The  same  writer  also  relates  anoth- 
er case,  that  of  a  man  who  had  been  trepanned,  and  who  per- 
ceived his  intellectual  faculties  failing,  and  his  existence  draw- 
ing to  a  close,  every  time  the  effused  blood  collected  upon 
the  brain  so  as  to  produce  pressure. 

Professor  Chapman,  of  Philadelphia,  mentions  in  his  lectures, 
that  he  saw  an  individual  with  his  skull  perforated,  and  the 
brain  exposed,  who  was  accustomed  to  submit  himself  to  the 
same  experiment  of  pressure  as  the  above,  and  who  was  ex- 
hibited by  the  late  Professor  Westar  to  his  class.  His  intel- 
lectual and  moral  faculties  disappeared  on  the  application  of 
pressure  to  the  brain  ;  they  were  held  under  the  thumb,  as  it 
were,  and  restored  at  pleasure  to  their  full  activity,  by  dis- 
continuing the  pressure.  But  the  most  extraordinary  case  of 
this  kind  within  my  knowledge,  and  one  peculiarly  interesting 
to  the  physiologist  and  metaphysician,  is  related  by  Sir  Astley 
Cooper  in  his  surgical  lectures. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  Jones  received  an  injury  on  his  head, 
while  on  board  a  vessel,  in  the  Mediterranean,  which  rendered 
him  insensible.  The  vessel,  soon  after  this,  made  Gibraltar, 
where  Jones  was  placed  in  the  hospital,  and  remained  several 
months  in  the  same  insensible  state.  He  was  then  carried,  on 
board  the  Dolphin  frigate,  to  Deptford,  and  from  thence  was 
sent  to  St.  Thomas's  Hospital,  London.  He  lay  constantly 
upon  his  back,  and  breathed  with  difficulty.  His  pulse  was 
regular,  and  each  time  it  beat  he  moved  his  fingers.  When 
hungry  or  thirsty,  he  moved  his  lips  and  tongue.  Mr.  Clyne, 
the  surgeon,  found  a  portion  of  the  skull  depressed,  trepanned 
him,  and  removed  the  depressed  portion.  Immediately  after 
this  operation  the  motion  of  his  fingers  ceased,  and  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  (the  operation  having  been  performed 
at  one)  he  sat  up  in  bed ;  sensation  and  volition  returned,  and 


A   SUGGESTION  TO  CONSUMPTIVES.  645 

in  four  days  he  got  out  of  bed  and  conversed.  The  last  thing 
he  remembered  was  the  circumstance  of  taking  a  prize  in  the 
Mediterranean.  From  the  moment  of  the  accident,  thirteen 
months  and  a  few  days,  oblivion  had  come  over  him,  and  all 
recollection  ceased.  He  had,  for  more  than  one  year,  drank 
of  the  cup  of  Lethe,  and  lived  wholly  unconscious  of  exist- 
ence ;  yet,  on  removing  a  small  portion  of  bone  which  pressed 
upon  the  brain,  he  was  restored  to  the  full  possession  of  the 
powers  of  his  mind  and  body. 


A   SUGGESTION  TO  CONSUMPTIVES. 

IN  November  and  December  of  each  year  multitudes  bear 
away  to  the  sunny  south  and  to  the  isles  of  the  sea,  leaving 
behind  them  dear  homes,  which,  in  many  instances,  they  shall 
never  see  again,  sundering  associations,  and  ties,  and  hearts, 
and  loves,  to  be  reunited  no  more.  Some,  and  not  a  few,  find 
in  a  few  days  after  they  reach  those  sunny  climes,  that  the 
flowers  do  indeed  bloom  as  in  the  spring-time,  the  birds  sing 
as  gladsomely,  and  the  clear,  blue  sky  and  the  bright,  warm 
sunshine  bring  gladness  and  health  to  all  —  but  themselves  ; 
that  the  chill  blood  in  their  veins  is  not  warmed,  the  hectic  in 
their  cheek  is  not  dissolved  into  the  red  hue  of  health,  while 
the  song  of  the  bird  and  the  fresh  tint  of  the  flower  carry 
them  back  to  their  childhood's  home,  now  far,  far  away,  and 
the  one  ambition  now  is,  to  go  and  die  at  home.  They  find 
that  the  mild,  warm  weather  of  the  south  debilitates  them 
just  as  much  as  their  own  summers  —  why  did  they  not  think 
of  that  before  ?  Could  a  warm  day  in  latitude  twenty  impart 
any  influences  more  than  an  equally  warm  day  in  latitude 
forty  would  do  ? 

If  a  man  is  sick  and  must  leave  home,  the  general  sugges- 
tion would  be  to  select  the  most  healthful  locality.  Vermont 
is  the  healthiest  State  in  the  Union,  and  the  records  of  mortal- 
ity for  the  last  thirty  years,  in  the  cheery  city  of  Portland, 
Maine,  justify  the  assertion  that  it  is  the  healthiest  city  on 
this  continent.  The  proof  is  in  the  fact,  among  others,  that  it 
has  never  been  visited  by  the  cholera,  or  suffered  from  any 
alarming  epidemic.  In  spite  of  its  proximity  to  the  ocean,  it 


646  MILK  SICKNESS. 

must  be  a  delightful  resort  for  consumptives,  at  least  during 
the  hot  summer  months,  which  make  such  large  draughts 
upon  the  strength  of  all  invalids. 


MILK  SICKNESS. 

MILK  SICKNESS,  called  by  some  the  Trembles,  is  a  disease 
prevalent  in  some  parts  of  the  west  and  south-west,  and  many 
have  died  with  it.  It  is  caused  by  drinking  the  milk  of  a 
diseased  cow ;  a  more  fatal  form  of  it  arises  from  the  use  of 
butter  or  cheese,  made  from  such  milk,  or  from  eating  the 
flesh  of  any  animal  fattened  with  the  milk,  while  the  cow  her- 
self, or  the  animal  fattened  with  her  milk,  does  not  necessa- 
rily manifest  symptoms  of  disease.  One  of  the  first  questions 
of  many  seeking  homes  in  the  far  west  is,  Has  milk  sickness 
ever  been  known  here  ?  Some  of  the  finest  lands  in  the  world 
are  without  a  market,  because  the  disease  is  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. 

Soon  after  swallowing  the  milk,  the  person  has  thirst,  nau- 
sea, swimming  in  the  head,  vomiting,  fever,  skin  hot,  eyeballs 
blood-shot,  excessive  debility,  paralysis,  oppression,  stupor, 
hickup,  and  death.  In  some  cases,  the  heart  beats  with  such 
violence  as  to  strike  the  bystanders  with  horror,  and  even 
alarms  the  physician  who  has  never  witnessed  it  before. 

The  legislature  of  one  State  at  least,  and  perhaps  of  several 
others,  has  offered  large  rewards  for  the  discovery  of  the 
thing  which  caused  the  cow  to  give  such  a  deadly  aliment. 
Kentucky  offered  a  thousand  dollars,  but  it  has  never  been 
awarded,  because  various  theories  have  been  presented  with- 
out a  satisfactory  quality  of  facts. 

A  recent  visit  to  the  west,  and  the  usual  reports  of  this  one 
and  that  having  died  of  milk  sickness,  coupled  with  the  fact  of 
my  connection  with  a  health  journal,  induce  me  to  make  a 
statement  which  I  have  never  seen  in  print,  and  which  I  trust 
will  do  much  good,  if  the  newspaper  press  should  give  publi- 
cation to  the  fact,  and  the  farmers  of  the  west  would  make  a 
practical  use  of  it.  I  will  not  take  time  here  to  meet  objec- 
tions to  the  statement  I  am  going  to  make ;  the  object  is  not 
argument,  but  a  plain  statement  of  what  I  consider  a  fact, 


MILK  SICKNESS.  647 

which   subsequent  observation   will   establish  in  all  time  to 
come. 

Well-fed  cows  never  give  milk  sickness.  I  have  revelled  in 
the  use  of  the  most  luscious  milk,  and  the  most  delightful 
fresh  butter,  for  weeks  together,  in  perfect  fearlessness  of 
milk  sickness,  when  several  persons  had  just  died  of  it  on  the 
next  farm.  The  reason  was,  the  cows  were  fed,  night  and 
morning,  in  winter,  with  as  much  corn  and  meal  as  they  want- 
ed, and  had  sweet  hay  to  eat  during  the  day,  and  plenty  of  it ; 
while  in  the  summer  they  had  fresh  pasture,  and  still  some- 
thing to  eat  of  the  slops  of  the  kitchen  at  milking  times ;  and 
knowing  they  would  get  something  good,  they  never  failed  to 
come  of  their  own  accord :  they  thus  literally  "  rolled  in  fat," 
summer  and  winter. 

Some  persons  have  attributed  it  to  one  vegetable,  or  weed, 
or  grass  ;  others  to  drinking  from  a  certain  spring,  each  local- 
ity having  a  different  plant ;  these  differences  of  opinion,  to- 
gether with  the  conceded  fact,  that  it  is  not  known  on  a  well- 
cultivated  farm,  are  proofs,  in  my  mind,  of  the  truthfulness  of 
the  opinion  which  I  have  suggested. 

Most  persons  who  go  far  out  west  are  poor,  and  soon  become 
improvident.  Very  many  study  their  ease,  and  how  they  can 
best  remove  the  necessities  of  locomotion.  To  save  chopping 
wood,  for  example,  they  take  time  by  the  forelock,  and  cut  the 
bark  off  the  tree  for  the  space  of  a  foot  all  around ;  the  tree 
dies,  and  sooner  or  later,  having  become  dry,  the  wind  blows 
it  down,  and  the  limbs  break  into  innumerable  pieces,  which 
are  only  to  be  picked  up  and  put  on  the  fire,  cut  and  dried  to 
hand. 

The  same  improvident  carelessness  leads  many  to  turn  their 
cows,  like  their  pigs,  into  the  woods,  to  gather  their  own  food, 
scarcely  ever  giving  them  a  w  nubbin  "  at  milking :  the  result 
is,  the  cattle  will  eat  closer  than  they  otherwise  would,  espe- 
cially in  the  fall  of  the  year,  when  the  grass  is  drying  up,  and 
the  weeds  have  been  wilted  by  frosts,  and  being  eaten  down, 
or  nibbed  close  to  the  ground,  the  roots  many  times  give  way, 
to  which  are  attached  sand  and  dirt ;  and  I  give  it  as  my  opin- 
ion, that  this  sand  and  dirt,  taken  into  a  system  debilitated  by 
scant  feeding,  causes  the  secretion  of  a  milk  which  it  is  death 
to  use.  But  whether  it  is  the  sand  which  attaches  itself  to 
the  root  of  a  close-nibbed  shrub,  or  weed,  or  grass,  is  not  of 


648  INFLUENCES. 

the  most  practical  importance  ;  the  two  great  facts  already 
named,  that  a  well-fed  cow  has  never  been  known  by  me  to 
give  diseased  milk ;  and  second,  the  general  admission  that 
milk  sickness  is  not  known  on  a  well-cultivated  plantation,  — 
for  he  who  cultivates  his  land  well,  will  always  feed  his  cattle 
well ;  these  two  great  facts  are  sufficiently  instructive,  and 
warrant  the  following  advice  :  — 

Feed  your  cows  well,  and  you  will  never  be  troubled  with 
milk  sickness. 

And  when  travelling  in  newly  settled  parts  of  the  western 
country,  or  even  through  old  settlements,  never  stop  at  a 
house  where  you  see  a  poor  cow  at  the  door. 


INFLUENCES. 

FOB  weal  or  woe,  influences  are  falling  around  our  children, 
especially  in  large  cities,  every  hour  of  their  existence,  and 
how  wide  awake  should  every  parental  heart  be  to  the  direc- 
tion of  the  character  of  those  influences  !  A  short  time  since, 
one  of  our  daily  papers,  in  noticing  the  death  of  an  individual, 
says,  "  He  was  a  man  of  undoubted  talent,  and  had  he  fallen 
under  proper  influences  might  have  achieved  a  reputation 
and  secured  a  fortune ;  as  it  was,  he  died  at  forty-two,  without 
character  or  morals,  a  drunkard,  an  outcast,  and  a  forger." 

What  were  some  of  the  malign  influences  which  shaped  this 
man's  course  for  infamy,  who  otherwise  might  have  been  a 
credit  to  the  nation  and  an  honor  to  his  kind  ?  The  love  of 
dress,  the  love  of  drink,  and  the  love  of  the  drama.  Foppery, 
brandy,  and  the  theatre,  were  his  ruin,  as  they  have  been  the 
ruin  of  countless  multitudes  before.  And  what  were  some  of 
the  proper  influences  which  the  notice  above  intimates  would 
have  worked  out  a  different  destiny  ?  The  influence  of  a 
home  made  happy,  in  childhood,  by  parental  unity  and  piety, 
by  sisterly  purity  and  affection,  and  by  such  a  remembrance 
of  the  Sabbath  day,  as  secures  it  to  be  spent  in  the  sanctua- 
ries of  religion. 


WASHING   THE  FACE  AND  HANDS.  649 


WASHING  THE  FACE  AND   HANDS. 

WASHING  the  face  and  hands  is  performed  by  millions  every 
day,  and  yet  perhaps  not  a  dozen  in  a  million  will  do  it  right. 
The  common  practice  is  to  take  a  basin  of  cold  water,  catch 
up  a  double  handful  of  water,  dash  it  into  the  face  and  rub 
it  vigorously,  thus  rubbing  all  the  matters  of  the  soiled  hands 
which  have  accumulated  during  the  night,  into  the  skin  of  the 
face. 

It  is  a  great  luxury  to  wash  the  hands  thoroughly  and  well 
with  soap  and  warm  water,  among  the  very  last  things  on 
going  to  bed  at  night.  The  cleanliest  person  will  often  find 
that  a  tea-cupful  of  warm  wate»  will  be  soiled  by  the  opera- 
tion, and  the  same  will  again  occur  the  first  thing  in  the 
morning,  since,  in  addition  to  adventitious  causes,  there  is, 
during  sleep,  an  exudation  of  an  oily  substance  through  the 
pores  of  the  skin,  and  to  this  floating  dust  of  the  rooms,  furni- 
ture, and  clothing  will  adhere. 

It  is  one  of  the  inestimable  blessings  of  city  life,  that  both 
warm  and  cold  water  are  at  hand  at  all  hours,  day  and  night. 
Take  a  tea-cupful  of  warm  water,  not  more,  and  with  soap  make 
a  lather,  with  which  wash  the  hands  thoroughly,  not  forgetting 
under  the  ends  of  the  finger  nails,  and  dabble  in  the  water 
until  every  particle  of  accumulation  is  removed.  This  is  better 
than  to  use  a  brush,  because  the  hard  bristles  will  irritate  and 
harden  the  tender  skin  under  the  ends  of  the  finger  nails. 
Scraping  out  the  dust  with  a  penknife  is  an  inexcusable  vio- 
lence ;  and  an  indecency,  too,  when  done  in  company.  Next 
rinse  the  hands  in  an  abundance  of  water,  until  all  the  soap  is 
thoroughly  removed.  The  face  may  then  be  washed  in  anoth- 
er supply  of  water,  warm  or  cool,  according  to  the  taste  of  the 
individual.  Warm  water  is  better,  as  it  dissolves  more  readi- 
ly any  accumulations  about  the  eyes  or  ears  ;  and  then,  with 
an  instantaneous  rinsing  of  the  face  in  cold  water,  the  work  is 
done  ;  and  then  your  hands  and  face  are  clean  enough  to  pat 
the  face  and  kiss  the  cheek  of  the  one  you  love  best,  as  a 
morning  salutation. 


650  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

WHERE  to  build,  and  what  shall  be  the  plan  of  the  house, 
are  questions  which  have  to  be  decided  every  year  by  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  enterprising  farmers  all  over  the  coun- 
try—  either  young  men  just  married,  who  are  about  "opening" 
a  farm  in  the  boundless  west,  or  by  men  more  advanced  in 
life,  who,  having  done  well,  have  decided  to  treat  themselves 
and  their  faithful  wives  to  a  new  and  better  house  than  the 
one  in  which  they  have  lived  and  striven  so  long  and  so  well 
together.  In  either  case  it  is  of  the  first  consequence,  and  is 
necessarily  the  first  step  to  be  taken,  after  having  decided  to 
build,  to  fix  upon  an  answer  to  the  question,  — 

WHERE    SHALL   I   BUILD? 

Upon  the  wise  decision  of  this  important  inquiry  depends, 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  the  health,  the  consequent  happi- 
ness, and  eventual  success  in  life  of  every  young  farmer.  It 
has  been  the  experience  of  tens  of  thousands  who  began  life 
hopefully,  and  who  went  to  work  with  willing  and  brave 
hearts  to  "clear"  a  farm,  and  make  it  a  home  for  life  for 
themselves  and  families,  that  they  did  well  until  sickness 
came,  under  which  their  strength  and  energy  wilted  away 
like  a  flower  without  water :  they  fell  behindhand,  lost  their 
energy,  ran  in  debt,  and,  finally,  settled  down  in  the  poor 
ambition  of  only  meeting  their  expenses  from  month  to  month, 
their  idea  of  getting  ahead  having  been  abandoned  forever. 

It  is  demonstrably  true  that  the  difference  of  a  few  hundred 
yards  —  of  a  dozen  rods  sometimes  —  in  locating  a  dwelling 
for  a  family,  is  precisely  the  difference  between  its  extinction 
in  a  few  years  by  disease,  and  its  prosperity,  its  health,  and 
a  large  family  of  industrious,  manly  sons,  and  of  refined,  ed- 
ucated, and  notable  daughters.  A  citizen  of  New  York  pur- 
chased a  beautiful  building  site  for  a  country  residence,  and, 
after  spending  two  years  and  a  large  amount  of  money  in 
preparing  it  for  the  reception  of  his  wife,  children,  and  ser- 
vants, he  moved  into  it.  Everybody  was  delighted  with  the 
"  prospect."  which  it  afforded  of  river,  and  field,  and  wood- 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  651 

lands,  and  distant  mountains.  With  autumn  came  chills  and 
fevers  among  his  servants.  He  abandoned  it,  and  never  occu- 
pied it  afterwards,  being  wholly  unwilling  that  his  family 
should  live  where  such  a  disease  was  possible. 

A  publishing  house  in  this  city  erected  a  private  residence 
in  the  country  at  an  expense  of  over  thirty  thousand  dollars. 
It  could  be  seen  for  many  miles  around ;  while  its  spacious 
piazzas  afforded  near  and  distant  views,  which  delighted  every 
visitor.  During  the  very  first  year  such  a  deadly  pestilence 
broke  out  among  the  inmates  that  it  was  at  once  abandoned, 
and  was  eventually  "  sold  for  a  song."  It  is  now  known  by 
residents  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  as  "Blank's  Folly." 

A  wealthy  and  retired  citizen  of  New  York  built  for  him- 
self a  splendid  mansion  up  town,  about  four  years  ago,  anti- 
cipating that  it  would  be  his  home  for  life.  He  had  occupied 
it  but  a  short  time,  when  one  by  one  the  members  of  his 
family  were  taken  sick.  A  strict  examination  discovered  the 
fact  that  the  house  had  been  erected  over  a  "  filling,"  the  em- 
anations from  which,  constantly  ascending,  impregnated  every 
room  in  the  building  with  deleterious  gases.  It  was  at  once 
abandoned  for  another  home. 

The  hospitals  and  barracks  in  and  near  Bengal  are  now 
almost  useless,  having  been  built  in  a  locality  utterly  unfitted 
for  human  habitations,  as  far  as  health  was  concerned.  Their 
erection  cost  the  British  government  sixty-five  millions  of 
dollars.  This  great  waste  of  money  might  have  been  alto- 
gether avoided  by  the  application  of  a  very  limited  knowledge 
of  the  causes  of  disease. 

From  official  papers  presented  to  the  British  government, 
it  is  shown  that  of  each  hundred  British  soldiers  in  India, 
ninety-four  disappear  from  the  ranks  before  the  age  of  thirty- 
five  years,  when,  from  military  returns,  it  is  known  that  "  the 
average  standard  of  health  for  Europeans  in  India  would  com- 
pare with  that  existing  anywhere  else  in  the  civilized  world, 
if  the  known  sources  of  disease  were  dried  up."  It  is  ad- 
mitted that  in  forty  years  one  hundred  thousand  men  might 
have  been  saved,  "  if  proper  localities  had  been  chosen  for 
their  dwellings." 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  difference  of  a  few  feet  in 
the  locality  of  two  buildings  is  the  difference  sometimes  be- 


652  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

t\veen  life  and  death.  These  things  being  so,  it  is  a  matter 
of  personal  happiness  and  pecuniary  interest  to  every  farmer 
who  contemplates  building  a  house,  which  is  to  be  a  home  for 
himself  and  family  probably  as  long  as  he  lives,  to  possess 
himself  of  such  information  as  to  enable  him  to  ascertain  cer- 
tainly, why  are  certain  localities  so  prejudicial  to  the  health 
of  families  residing  therein ;  or,  in  other  words,  what  is  the 
agent  which  causes  disease  in  this  mysterious  manner?  It 
may  seem  discouraging  at  first  view  to  state  that  this  destruc- 
tive agency  is  as  invisible  as  the  viewless  wind.  At  the  same 
time  it  will  afford  encouragement  to  be  assured  that  its  nature 
is  known,  as  also  some  of  the  laws  by  which  it  is  regulated, 
and  that  by  an  easy  attention  to  them  the  Samson  may  be 
shorn  of  his  locks,  and  the  great  destroyer  may  either  be 
avoided,  or  rendered  as  harmless  as  the  gentlest  touch  of 
infancy.  The  name  of  this  remorseless  destroyer  of  human 
life  is 

MIASM, 

from  a  Greek  word,  which  means  emanation;  that  is,  arising 
from,  because  it  conies  up  from  the  surface  of  the  earth.  It 
is  a  short  word ;  but  it  brings  weary  sickness  and  agonizing 
death  to  hundreds  of  thousands  every  year.  It  will  bring 
sickness  and  death,  sooner  or  later,  to  many  a  reader  of  this 
article,  but  a  sickness  and  death  which  could  have  been 
avoided. 

Miasni  is  the  principal  cause  of  nearly  every  "  epidemic  " 
disease ;  that  is,  of  every  sickness  which  "  falls  upon  the 
people,"  attacking  numbers  in  any  community,  such  as  fever 
and  ague,  diarrhoea,  dysentery,  cholera,  bilious,  intermittent, 
congestive,  and  yellow  fevers.  But  it  is  gratifying  to  know 
that  it  is  an  avoidable  cause  of  disease.  Money  and  wisely 
directed  efforts  can  banish  it  from  almost  any  locality.  All 
that  is  needed  is  to  know  the  laws  of  mianm,  and  wisely 
adapt  ourselves  to  them. 

In  1860  one  of  the  daily  papers  of  New  Orleans  stated, 
"  The  yellow  fever  has  broken  out  in  the  city  under  every 
conceivable  variety  of  circumstances :  when  the  streets  were 
clean  and  when  they  were  filthy ;  when  the  river  was  high 
and  when  it  was  low ;  after  a  prolonged  drought  and  in  the 
midst  of  daily  torrents ;  when  the  heat  was  excessive  and 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  653 

when  the  air  was  spriug-like  and  pleasant ;  when  excavations 
and  disturbances  of  the  soil  had  been  frequent,  and  when 
scarcely  a  pavement  had  been  laid  or  a  building  erected. 
Almost  the  only  fixed  and  undeniable  fact  connected  with  the 
disease  is,  that  its  prevalence  is  simultaneous  with  the  heats 
of  summer,  and  that  frost  is  its  deadly  enemy." 

Here,  then,  are  two  important  laws  of  miasm ;  and  scien- 
tific observation  directed  to  that  special  point  in  all  countries 
confirms  the  two  great  truths,  that  — 

First.     Miasm  prevails  in  hot  weather. 

Second.  Miasm  cannot  exist  as  a  cause  of  disease  in  cold 
weather. 

Third.  An  inference  is  drawn  embodying  a  third  law  of 
miasm,  which  is,  that  it  is  a  cause  of  disease  only  from  June 
to  October  in  our  latitudes. 

Fourth.  A  fourth  law  of  miasm  is  confirmed  by  the  now 
historical  fact  that  for  three  summers  yellow  fever  has  not 
been  known  as  an  epidemic  in  New  Orleans,  because,  from 
the  scientific  views  held  by  those  in  power  in  that  city  in  the 
early  summer  of  1861,  it  has  been  kept  well  drained.  In 
other  words,  it  has  been  kept  clean  and  dry. 

It  is  within  the  memory  of  the  present  generation  that, 
some  thirty  years  ago  or  more,  the  city  of  Louisville,  in  Ken- 
tucky, was  one  of  the  most  pestilential  spots  in  the  habitable 
west.  But  by  a  wise  system  of  filling  and  draining,  it  is  now 
one  of  the  healthiest,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
cities  of  the  great  valley. 

We  have,  then,  arrived  at  four  controlling  facts  in  reference 
to  miasm  :  that  heat  and  moisture  are  essential  to  its  produc- 
tion in  any  locality ;  that  it  cannot  exist  where  there  is  severe 
frost  or  great  dry  ness. 

But  as  it  is  known  the  world  over  that  miasm  never  exists 
in  deserts,  where  there  is  nothing  but  dry  sand  and  a  burning 
heat,  it  is  clear  that  something  more  than  heat  is  necessary  to 
cause  miasm.  But  it  is  further  known  that  when  miasm  is  so 
malignant  in  localities  where  it  is  certain  death  to  sleep  on 
shore  for  a  single  night,  a  man  can  go  a  mile  and  sleep  on 
shipboard,  and  keep  in  perfect  health.  This  shows  that  some- 
thing more  than  heat  and  moisture  are  necessary  to  the  pro- 
duction of  miasm.  The  third  element  is  vegetation  —  anything 


654  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

that  grows  from  the  earth  in  the  nature  of  grass,  leaves,  or 
wood.  These  three  things  in  combination  are  the  great  agents 
for  the  production  of  miasm ;  no  two  of  them  can  produce  it. 
They  all  must  be  present  together,  and  for  a  considerable 
time,  so  as  to  produce  destructive  decay  of  the  vegetation, 
which  requires  a  degree  of  heat  exceeding  eighty  degrees 
Fahrenheit.  These  three  elements  will  always  produce  miasm, 
whether  out  of  doors,  under  the  influence  of  the  heat  of  the 
sun,  or  on  shipboard,  or  in  an  uncleanly  kitchen,  by  the  heat 
of  stoves  or  fireplaces. 

If,  then,  a  farmer  builds  his  house  over  a  "  filling,"  he  will 
have  sickness  in  his  household.  If  he  builds  on  "  bottom 
lands."  "  made  land,"  where  running  streams  have  in  the 
course  of  years  been  depositing  decaying  and  dead  leaves, 
mud,  &c.,  he  will  certainly  have  various  diseases  in  his  family, 
unless  a  system  of  thorough  and  constant  draining  is  put  in 
operation. 

Ponds,  sluggish  streams,  or  any  accumulations  of  water  in 
a  productive  soil,  always  yields  miasm,  and  a  dwelling  in 
their  vicinity  will  be  certainly  visited  with  miasmatic  diseases, 
unless  attention  is  paid  to  certain  circumstances  which  may 
modify  the  result. 

Miasm  is  not  supposed  to  pass  a  swift-running  stream ; 
hence  if  a  stream  runs  through  a  farm,  and  one  bank  of  it  is 
level  and  rich,  the  other  higher  and  rolling,  better  far  build 
on  the  latter,  for  then  the  miasm  of  the  flat  land  cannot  cross 
the  stream  to  the  house.  If  there  is  no  stream,  but  a  pond 
or  flat  land,  and  the  house  must  be  built  in  the  vicinity,  build 
it  so  that  the  prevailing  winds  from  June  to  October  shall 
blow  from  the  house  towards  the  pond  or  flat  land,  for  miasm, 
being  a  gas  or  air,  is  carried  before  the  wind. 

It  is  a  hazardous  experiment  to  build  on  an  eminence,  if  it 
gradually  slopes  to  the  water's  edge,  or  to  a  low,  flat  piece 
of  ground,  unless  there  is  a  growth  of  trees  or  other  shrul)- 
bery  intervening,  because  miasm,  like  the  clouds,  will  some- 
times "  roll  up  "  the  side  of  a  hill  or  mountain.  It  is  known 
that  vigorous  growing  bushes,  or  hedges,  or  trees,  between  a 
miasm-producing  locality  and  a  dwelling,  antagonize  the  mias- 
matic influences,  the  living  leaves  seeming  to  absorb  and  feed 
upon  the  miasm  ;  but  there  should  be  a  space  of  fifty  yards  at 


FARMERS1  HOUSES.  655 

least  between  the  hedge  and  the  house,  and  the  thicker  and 
broader  and  higher  the  hedge  the  better,  and  the  nearer  the 
leaves  are  to  the  ground  the  better ;  for  the  miasm  gropes  on 
the  surface  in  its  greatest  malignity,  and  is  seldom  concen- 
trated enough  ut  the  height  of  ten  feet  to  be  materially  hurt- 
ful to  man,  unless  it  comes  up  a  slope.  Hence  in  the  old 
cities  of  the  world,  in  the  times  of  plagues  and  pestilences, 
the  people  who  could  not  "  go  to  the  country  "  had  a  custom 
among  them  to  live  in  the  upper  stories  of  their  dwellings 
while  the  sickness  raged.  They  would  not  even  come  down 
stairs  to  obtain  marketing,  but  would  let  down  baskets  by 
ropes  to  the  country  people  for  the  provisions  they  had  to 
sell.  But  they  failed  to  discover  why  the  country  people 
could  come  to  town  with  impunity,  while  they  themselves 
were  safe  from  disease  in  proportion  as  they  lived  in  the  upper 
stories  of  their  dwellings.  But  a  law  of  miasm  has  since 
been  determined,  which  beautifully  unravels  the  mystery. 
Miasm  is  condensed  by  cold,  made  heavy,  and  falls  to  the 
earth,  hovering,  as  it  were,  within  a  foot  of  its  surface ; 
hence  is  not  breathed,  unless  a  man  sleeps  on  the  ground. 
On  the  other  hand,  heat  so  rarefies  miasm  as  to  make  it  com- 
paratively innocuous.  Hence  the  coolness  of  the  early  morn- 
ing and  of  sundown  throws  the  miasm  to  the  surface  by  con- 
densing or  concentrating  it,  and  thus  making  it  heavy ;  while 
the  heat  of  the  day  of  a  summer's  sun  so  rarefied  and  light- 
ened the  miasm  as  to  send  it  upward  to  the  clouds.  The 
country  people  came  to  town  in  the  daytime  ! 

Less  than  fifty  years  ago  the  yellow  fever  and  other  deadly 
diseases  prevailed  in  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  and  it  was 
known  to  be  certain  death,  except  to  the  very  hardy  or  the 
acclimated,  to  sleep  in  the  city  a  single  night ;  }ret  the  mer- 
chants came  to  town  at  midday,  under  a  blistering  July  sun, 
with  perfect  impunity.  Hence,  from  June  to  October,  it  is 
best  for  farmers'  families  to  sleep  in  the  upper  stories  of  their 
dwellings.  In  this  connection,  it  is  practically  useful  to  know 
that  the  most  malignant  agencies  of  nature  may  be  rendered 
harmless  by  a  little  observation  and  the  wise  use  of  a  little 
knowledge.  Miasm  is  most  pernicious  about  sunset  and  sun- 
rise, because  the  cooling  of  the  atmosphere  at  the  close  of  the 
day  causes  it  to  become  condensed  above,  to  become  heavy 


656  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

and  fall  to  the  earth,  where  it  is  breathed,  while  after  sun- 
down, it  has  settled  so  near  the  earth  as  to  be  below  the 
mouth  and  nostrils  ;  hence  it  is  not  breathed.  When  the  sun 
begins  to  rise  in  the  morning  the  miasm  begins  to  warm  and 
to  ascend,  but  after  breakfast  it  is  so  high  as  to  be  above  the 
point  at  which  it  can  be  breathed ;  and  besides,  it  is  so  rare- 
fied, so  attenuated,  as  to  be  innocuous.  Therefore  the  great 
practical  truth  beautifully  follows,  that  miasm  exerts  its  most 
baleful  influence  on  human  health  about  sunrise  and  sunset ; 
hence,  of  all  the  hours  of  the  twenty-four,  these  are  the  most 
hurtful  in  which  to  be  out  of  doors,  and,  for  the  same  reason, 
the  hours  of  midday  and  midnight  are  the  most  healthful  to 
be  in  the  open  air  in  miasmatic  seasons  and  countries,  that  is 
from  June  to  October,  north  of  the  thirty-tifth  degree  of  north 
latitude.  But,  unfortunately,  the  cool  of  the  early  morning 
and  the  late  afternoon  are  the  most  pleasant  times  in  the 
twenty-four  hours  for  field  work,  and  the  industrious  farmer 
will  be  exceedingly  loath  to  spend  these  hours  in-doors,  should 
his  house  be  already  located  in  a  miasmatic  situation.  There 
is,  however,  an  almost  infallible  preventive  of  any  ill  effects 
arising  from  such  an  exposure  to  miasm  about  sunrise  and  sun- 
set, and  one  that  is  easy  of  practical  application  under  almost 
any  ordinary  circumstances,  and  it  ought  to  be  made  known 
and  repeated  millions  of  times  through  the  public  prints  every 
year,  until  the  information  has  reached  every  farmer's  dwell- 
ing throughout  the  United  States.  Farmers,  whose  houses 
are  already  built  in  malarial  districts,  such  as  in  low  "  made  " 
lands,  near  ponds  and  stagnant  water,  or  in  the  neighborhood 
of  sluggish  streams  or  marshy  places,  may  exempt  themselves 
almost  altogether  from  the  whole  class  of  malarial  diseases, 
such  as  diarrhoeas,  dysenteries,  chills  and  fevers  of  nearly 
every  grade,  by  eating  a  hearty  and  warm  breakfast  before 
they  put  their  heads  out  of  doors  in  the  morning,  and  by  tak- 
ing their  suppers  just  before  sundown.  The  philosophy  of 
the  matter  is,  that  a  hot  or  hearty  meal  so  excites  the  circula- 
tion, and  so  invigorates  the  whole  frame,  that  it  acquires  the 
power  of  resisting  the  disease-engendering  influences  of  miasm. 
A  neglect  of  such  a  simple  precaution,  in  certain  districts 
where  malaria  is  known  to  exist  in  a  concentrated  form,  is  a 
cause  of  death  so  common  as  to  be  known  and  guarded  against 


FARMERS*  BOUSES.  657 

by  the  most  uneducated  laborers.  A  gentleman,  a  native  of 
the  city  of  Rome,  informed  the  writer  that  multitudes  of 
agricultural  laborers,  who  have  been  employed  during  the 
day  in  the  low,  level,  damp  fields  near  the  city,  come  into 
town  about  sundown,  and  sleep  in  the  streets  and  on  the  steps 
and  stoops  of  houses,  in  order  to  avoid  the  sickly  atmosphere 
of  the  evening  in  the  "  marshes."  No  less  a  personage  than 
a  young  king  lost  his  life  within  two  years,  under  the  follow- 
ing circumstances  :  Having  to  pass  the  night  in  one  of  his 
journeys  at  a  house  located  in  the  midst  of  an  extensive  low- 
land or  marsh,  and  wishing  to  be  on  horseback  early  in  the 
morning  for  a  hunt,  the  landlord  pressed  upon  him  the  danger 
of  being  out  early,  and  that,  at  least,  he  should  take  his 
breakfast  first.  The  impatient  youth  was  observed  early  next 
morning  sitting  at  his  open  window,  enjoying,  as  he  thought, 
the  delightful  air,  as  it  blew  in  upon  him,  and  soon  after 
ordered  his  horses.  He  became  ill,  and  died  of  a  fever  in  a 
few  days. 

The  writer  has  lived  among  the  Creoles  of  Louisiana,  where 
vegetation  is  rank  in  swamps,  upon  which  the  hot  summer's 
sun  beams  with  fiery  power  for  many  hours  every  day,  but 
they  are  proverbially  exempt  from  fevers,  as  are  Northerners, 
also,  who  adopt  the  habits  of  the  Creole  —  that  is,  to  have 
their  breakfast,  or  at  least  a  cup  of  hot,  strong  coffee,  with 
milk,  brought  to  their  bedsides  before  they  get  up  of  a  morn- 
ing. The  value  of  this  practice  is  known  and  appreciated  all 
over  the  South,  so  that,  wrhile  it  is  greatly  better  to  locate  a 
house  where  miasm  cannot  reach  it  from  ponds,  or  sluggish 
streams,  or  bottom  lands,  a  farmer  whose  house  is  already 
thus  situated  is  not  without  an  efficient  remedy  in  the  plan 
proposed  above. 

But  there  is  another  infallible  remedy  against  miasmatic 
diseases  as  to  families  who  feel  themselves  compelled  to  live 
in  a  house  exposed  to  miasm.  It  was  stated  a  while  ago  that 
heat  so  rarefied  miasm  as  to  render  it  innocuous.  No  family 
can  be  troubled  with  fever  and  ague  in  any  ordinary  locality 
where  that  disease  prevails,  if  from  June  to  October  a  brisk 
fire  is  kindled  in  the  family  room,  to  burn  for  an  hour  about 
sunrise  and  sunset,  and  if  the  family  are  required  to  repair  to 
that  room  morning  and  evening,  and  remain  there  at  least 


658  FAJRMERS'  HOUSES. 

until  they  get  their  breakfast  in  the  morning,  and  their  sup- 
per at  the  close  of  the  day.  It  follows,  then,  that  ordinarily 
there  is  nothing  uuhealthful  in  the  night  air  after  supper. 
On  the  contrary,  health  would  be  promoted,  and  important 
social  benefits  would  accrue  to  country  neighborhoods,  if  two 
or  three  nights  of  every  week,  after  tea,  were  spent  in  friendly 
visiting,  remaining  not  later  than  ten,  thus  encouraging  that 
interchange  of  social  associations  which  diffuses  intelligence, 
promotes  kindly  feeling,  enlarges  the  views,  expands  the 
ideas,  and  elevates  the  whole  character,  by  cultivating  the 
tastes  as  to  dress,  tidiness  of  person,  and  the  imitation  or 
copying  after  any  ornament  or  improvement  of  the  grounds 
and  dwellings  of  the  neighborhood.  In  this  way  one  intelli- 
gent, practical  farmer  in  a  neighborhood,  by  occupying  a 
house  which  he  has  built  or  remodelled  for  himself,  so  as  to 
have  all  the  comforts  and  conveniences  which  knowledge  and 
observation  and  experiment  have  found  to  contribute  largely 
to  the  health,  happiness,  and  thrift  of  the  occupants,  will 
prove  a  leaven  which  shall  spread  from  one  habitation  to 
another  in  a  comparatively  short  time,  until  every  dwelling 
in  a  circuit  of  many  miles  will  be  more  or  less  improved, 
and  thus  the  face  of  the  whole  country  be  changed  for  the 
better,  with  the  promise  and  realization  of  a  further  progress 
onward  and  upward. 

RECAPITULATION. 

Although  the  statements  which  have  been  made  were  pre- 
sented in  connection  with  the  selection  of  the  most  healthful 
locality  for  building  a  new  family  residence,  they  are  practi- 
cally applicable  to  all  cases  wherein  it  may  be  desirable  to 
make  a  house  already  built  more  comfortable  and  more  health- 
ful than  it  is,  because,  from  what  has  been  stated,  it  wiil  be 
seen  that  a  dwelling  already  erected  should  not  be  hastily  and 
blindly  abandoned  merely  on  account  of  its  insalubrity,  for, 
in  the  light  of  the  above  statements,  it  may  be  found  that  the 
causes  of  any  present  sickness  are  of  a  transient  or  of  a 
remediable  character,  which  may  thus  be  illustrated. 

The  most  favorable  circumstances  for  the  production  of  a 
miasmatic  epidemic  —  speedy,  malignant,  and  wide-spread- 
ing —  are  the  exposure  of  the  muddy  bottom  of  a  pond  or 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  659 

sluggish  stream  to  the  beaming  heat  of  a  summer's  sun.  In 
less  than  a  week  whole  neighborhoods  have  been  stricken 
with  disease,  yet,  under  such  circumstances,  and  according  to 
the  well-established  laws  of  miasm,  five  families  may  dwell 
within  half  a  mile  of  a  drained  mill-pond,  and  yet  only  one 
will  suffer  from  it,  while  the  other  four  will  remain  exempt 
from  unusual  disease. 

First.  If  a  rapid  stream  of  considerable  width  runs  be- 
tween the  drained  pond  and  the  house. 

Second.  If  there  is  interposed  a  thick  hedge  or  growth 
of  living,  luxuriant  trees  or  bushes.  A  treble  row  of  sun- 
flowers is  known  to  have  answered  the  purpose  in  repeated 
cases. 

Third.  If  the  prevailing  winds  from  June  to  October  are 
from  the  house  towards  the  pond. 

Fourth.     If  the  house  be  on  a  steep  hill. 

The  reasons  for  the  above  exemptions  are  here  shortly 
recapitulated :  — 

First.     Miasm  does  not  cross  a  wide,  rapid  stream. 

Second.  Miasm  is  absorbed  by  thick,  living,  luxuriant 
foliage. 

Third.     Miasm  cannot  travel  against  the  wind. 

Fourth.     Miasm  cannot  ascend  a  high,  steep  hill. 

There  is  no  mystery  in  these  variations,  nor  any  com- 
plexity, when  the  laws  of  miasm  are  thoroughly  understood. 

It  will  be  practically  useful  for  the  young  farmer,  in  a  pe- 
cuniary point  of  view,  to  understand,  further,  that  in  one 
year  a  house  on  the  banks  of  a  mill-pond  or  sluggish  stream 
may  be  visited  with  sickness ;  the  very  next  year  that  same 
house  may  be  exempt,  because  it  is  a  very  cold  summer ;  the 
third  year  it  will  escape,  because  it  is  a  very  hot  summer ; 
the  fourth  year  it  will  be  a  very  healthful  habitation,  because 
it  has  been  a  very  wet  summer.  Why  these  variations  ? 

First.  Miasm  cannot  form,  or  if  it  does,  cannot  rise  through 
a  foot  or  two  of  depth  of  water,  and  the  wet  summer  kept 
the  pond  covered. 

Second.  The  hot  summer  dried  the  bed  of  the  pond  to 
dust,  and  there  can  be  no  miasm  without  dampness. 

Third.  The  cold  summer  did  not  give  the  degree  of  heat 
necessary  to  the  generation  of  miasm — that  is,  eighty  degrees 
of  Fahrenheit. 


660  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

These  principles  fully  explain  the  apparent  mystery  of  the 
epidemics  in  New  Orleans,  already  referred  to  in  the  first 
part  of  this  article. 

An  illustration  of  the  laws  of  miasm,  which  the  writer  will 
never  forget,  was  had  during  a  cholera  summer  in  Boston, 
under  the  following  circumstances  :  The  city  authorities  in- 
augurated a  most  perfect  system  of  cleanliness.  Efforts  were 
made  to  procure  the  services  of  the  most  reliable  men  to  visit 
every  house  from  cellar  to  garret,  and  compel  the  removal 
of  everything  which  could  have  even  a  remote  tendency  to 
invite  the  fearful  scourge.  The  results  were  admirable  ;  there 
was  not  a  single  case  of  cholera,  except  in  a  very  restricted 
district ;  in  fact,  only  one  family  was  attacked.  A  more 
special  examination  was  instituted,  when  there  was  found,  in 
a  remote  corner  of  the  cellar,  a  large  pile  of  the  accumula- 
tions of  bad  housekeeping  for  years,  and  this  was  in  a  state 
of  putridity.  On  its  removal,  and  the  plentiful  use  of  the 
most  powerful  disinfectants,  the  disease  at  once  disappeared, 
and  did  not  return. 

CELLARS    IN    DWELLING-HOUSES. 

With  a  fact  like  the  above  staring  one  in  the  face,  and  in 
connection  with  another,  that  farmers  generally  make  their 
cellars  the  winter  and  summer  receptacles  of  every  variety 
of  vegetables  and  fruits,  more  or  less  of  which  are  put  away 
in  a  bruised,  rotted,  or  unripe  condition,  and  thus  speedily 
become  putrid  by  fermentation  without  the  aid  of  much  heat, 
it  is  apparent  that  these  gases  are  constantly  ascending,  and 
must  unavoidably  impregnate  every  room  in  the  house  with  a 
vitiated  and  unwholesome  atmosphere  ;  and  in  consequence 
of  another  known  fact,  and  unfortunately  almost  universal, 
that  the  cellar,  being  convenient  and  out  of  sight  of  visit- 
ors, is  made  the  receptacle  of  all  that  is  old  and  unseemly, 
as  well  as  of  kitchen  offal,  by  the  laziness  of  bad  housekeep- 
ers or  unprincipled  servants.  For  these  considerations,  it  is 
clear  that  it  would  be  better  if  no  cellar  should  be  built  under 
that  part  of  a  house  which  is  to  be  occupied  as  a  place  to  eat, 
and  sleep,  and  live  in,  whether  in  town  or  country.  But,  as 
in  the  country,  the  cellar  is  regarded  as  an  indispensable  part 
of  the  house,  the  greatest  precaution  should  be  exercised  to 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  661 

insure  cleanliness  and  pure  air  with  ventilation,  preventing  it 
from  becoming  the  fruitful  source  of  sickness  and  suffering. 

In  a  family  in  one  of  the  healthiest  villages  of  Massachu- 
setts, a  few  years  ago,  the  father  and  three  children  died  of 
an  obstinate  slow  fever,  and  the  mother  and  two  other  chil- 
dren were  w  hard  at  death's  door "  for  weeks.  Before  the 
fatal  results,  but  too  late  to  prevent  them,  an  examination  of 
the  house,  by  order  of  the  physician,  disclosed  in  the  cellar  a 
barrel  partly  filled  with  decayed  onions,  the  undoubted  cause 
of  the  disease.  If  there  is  any  obscure  or  slow  disease  in  the 
family  of  any  reader  of  this  article,  and  a  cellar  is  attached 
to  the  building,  it  is  worth  the  experiment  to  secure  the  fol- 
lowing alterations  as  to  the  cellar:  Let  the  cellar  be  emp- 
tied of  every  movable  thing ;  let  the  walls  and  floor  be  thor- 
oughly swept,  and,  if  practicable,  washed ;  and  after  being 
allowed  to  air  for  a  week  or  two,  have  the  ceiling  plas- 
tered. The  Avails  should  be  smoothly  plastered,  and  the  floor 
covered  with  a  hard  cement,  thick,  smooth,  and  strong;  and 
both  walls  and  ceiling  should  be  well  whitewashed  once  a 
year,  and  the  old  whitewash  should  be  swept  off  before  the 
new  is  applied.  The  best,  because  the  cheapest  and  most 
universally  available  whitewash,  is  made  as  follows  :  Put  un- 
slacked  lime,  that  which  is  in  the  form  of  the  original  rock, 
in  a  vessel ;  pour  boiling  water  on  it  until  it  is  covered ;  place 
a  cloth  over  the  vessel,  so  as  to  confine  the  most  minute  par- 
ticles of  the  lime,  they  being  the  ones  which  most  perfectly 
penetrate  the  surfaces  to  which  the  wash  is  applied,  and 
consequently  remain  the  longest.  Subsequently  dilute  the 
wash  to  the  consistence  of  thick  cream,  and  apply  it  thor- 
oughly and  thickly,  thus  accomplishing  two  objects,  a  white, 
light-giving  surface,  having  a  "  body,"  as  painters  term  it, 
which  is  capable  of  absorbing,  and  thus  rendering  harm- 
less the  bad  airs  or  gases  which  may  be  formed  in  the 
cellar. 

Every  partition  and  every  shelf  in  a  cellar  should  be  made 
of  smoothly  planed  boards,  well  covered  with  good  white 
paint,  thus  preventing  the  accumulation  of  dust,  and  aiding 
in  making  the  cellar  light,  cheerful,  and  clean ;  for  the  more 
light  you  can  have  the  better.  Every  cellar  should  be  so  con- 
trived that  either  by  its  grating,  or  windows,  or  doors  it  may 


662  FARMERS1  SOUSES. 

be  easily  and  thoroughly  ventilated  an  hour  or  two  at  least 
every  day  in  the  year ;  this  is  often  very  perfectly  done  by  a 
flue  running  into  the  chimney. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark  that  if  a  cellar  is  liable 
at  any  time  of  the  year,  even  for  a  few  days,  to  have  water 
rise  and  stand  on  the  floor,  or  even  to  have  the  floor  a  little 
wet,  draining  tiles  should  be  put  under  it  before  the  floor  is 
cemented.  All  shelves  in  a  cellar  should  be  so  arranged 
that  you  can  go  all  around  them ;  it  is  not  advisable  to  put 
any  shelving  against  a  cellar  wall ;  and  if  all  the  shelves  are 
suspended  from  the  ceiling,  so  much  the  better  on  several 
accounts,  not  the  least  of  which  is  that  more  w  floor  room  "  is 
thus  obtained. 

When  a  house  is  to  be  erected  in  a  new  locality,  and  it  has 
been  wisely  determined  to  have  the  cellar  off  from  the  family 
building,  but  yet  to  be  easily  accessible  from  the  kitchen 
without  having  to  go  "  out  of  doors  "  —  say  under  the  kitchen 
itself,  or  under  the  wood-house,  or  simply  under  the  ground, 
its  roof  being  a  part  of  the  front  yard  or  garden,  if  you 
please,  but  so  covered  over  with  soil  and  grass,  bushes,  &c., 
that  it  would  not  be  known  to  be  there  —  the  next  point  is  to 
arrange  that  the  foundation  of  the  house  should  be  laid  on 
stone,  at  least  three  feet  deep,  and  on  a  spot  descending,  if 
possible,  in  every  direction.  The  walls  of  the  house  should 
be  at  least  two  feet  above  the  surface  of  the  earth,  crevices 
having  been  left  at  intervals  on  each  side,  so  as  to  admit  a 
free  circulation  of  air,  but  not  large  enough  to  admit  mice. 
There  should  be  an  open  ditch  all  around  the  inside  of  the 
wall,  as  a  drain  to  any  dampness,  with  a  sufficient  descent,  at 
least  at  one  point,  to  insure  the  drain  to  be  passed  off. 

It  is  well  to  plaster  a  foundation  wall  inside  and  out,  and 
to  have  every  stone  well  laid  in  a  good  mortar,  not  being 
sparing  of  lime  or  sand  in  its  preparation.  Too  much  "loam," 
or  common  dirt,  is  generally  used,  so  that  the  mortar  crum- 
bles to  powder.,  has  no  tenacity,  no  binding  power,  instead  of 
hardening  and  becoming  a  part  of  the  wall  itself. 

The  space  between  the  lower  edge  of  the  joists  of  the 
ground  floor  and  the  upper  edge  should  be  tilled  with  dry 
sand,  ashes,  or,  which  is  much  better,  charcoal,  for  the  three- 
fold object  of,  first,  keeping  the  lower  floor  dry ;  second, 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  663 

keeping  it  warmer  in  winter ;  third,  absorbing  any  deleteri- 
ous gases  which  might  arise  from  the  ground.  As  to  the 
materials  for  building,  each  locality  has  its  peculiar  conven- 
iences ;  but  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  wooden  buildings 

o  o 

are  best  for  the  country,  because  they  are  drier,  and  conse- 
quently more  healthful. 

The  best  kind  of  roof  for  a  country  house  is  the  old-fash- 
ioned steep  roofs,  with  a  "comb"  in  the  centre,  with  no 
ff  hips "  or  dormer  windows :  these  may  make  a  building 
more  picturesque,  but  they  so  generally  leak,  that  a  plain, 
steep,  shingled  roof  is  safer,  more  economical,  and  more 
universally  available. 

WATER. 

The  first  consideration  is  pure,  soft  water.  That  from  a 
spring  is  most  to  be  desired,  and  can  easily  be  procured  by 
means  of  pipes  when  the  spring  is  above  the  residence.  If 
the  spring  is  on  a  level  with  or  below  the  house,  and  is  copi- 
ous, with  some  fall,  a  portion  can  be  thrown  up  into  a  reser- 
voir at  the  dwelling  by  means  of  a  water-ram,  or  other  sim- 
ple and  unexpensive  machinery.  And  by  the  same  means, 
and  from  the  same  source,  the  dairy  (and,  if  possible,  the 
barn  also)  should  be  well  supplied. 

If  no  sufficient  spring  is  convenient,  a  well  (with  an  old- 
fashioned  pump  in  it)  where  soft  water  can  be  obtained  by 
digging,  is  probably  the  next  best  source  of  supply,  as  it,  too, 
is  always  cool  and  lively.  Every  part  of  the  kitchen,  the 
wash  and  bake-house,  the  dairy  and  barn,  can  be  supplied 
from  the  pump  by  the  aid  of  pipes,  saving  much  labor  at 
small  cost. 

But  in  limestone  and  other  sections  where  pure  soft  water 
cannot  be  obtained  from  a  spring  or  by  digging,  by  all  means 
provide  a  capacious  cistern  for  the  dwelling  and  another  for 
the  barn  buildings.  That  is  a  miserable  and  costly  economy 
which  substitutes  barrels,  hogsheads,  stands,  and  other  such 
insufficient  contrivances  to  procure  rain-water  for  cleansing 
purposes,  to  save  (?)  the  cost  of  a  good  large  cistern  in  the 
first  place  !  By  means  of  properly  constructed  filters  attached 
to  the  cisterns,  and  by  keeping  roofs  free  from  pigeons  and 
other  poultry,  clean,  pure,  soft  water  can  always  be  provided 


664  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

in  great  abundance ;  and  by  the  aid  of  an  ice-house  (which 
may  be  provided  in  most  localities  at  comparatively  small 
expense)  the  water  can  also  be  made  refreshingly  cool.  But 
of  ice-houses  in  another  place. 

The  roofs  of  barn  and  dwelling  will  furnish  an  ample  sup- 
ply of  rain  water  for  any  farmer's  use,  and,  next  to  pure 
spring  or  well  water,  it  is  the  most  healthful  for  drinking  and 
bathing,  as  well  as  best  for  cooking  and  washing.  "  Hard 
water,"  as  it  is  commonly  called,  not  only  lays  a  foundation 
for  many  tormenting  chronic  complaints,  but  fails  to  soften 
meats  and  vegetables  in  preparing  them  for  food ;  and  for 
cleansing  purposes  it  involves  expense  for  additional  soap  or 
other  alkaline  substances,  and  increased  labor  jn  its  applica- 
tions. Even  for  farm  stock  it  is  not  as  good  as  soft  water, 
and  is  very  apt  to  give  animals  a  rough,  "  staring  "  coat. 

But,  whatever  kind  of  water,  provide  it  in  abundance,  and 
by  all  means  have  it  convenient  for  all  purposes.  The  ex- 
pense of  these  conveniences  will  be  more  than  saved  in  health, 
in  labor,  in  time,  and  even  in  comfort  alone.  No  woman 
should  ever  be  required  to  go  from  the  warm  kitchen,  the 
steaming  wash-tub,  or  glowing  oven,  into  the  cold  or  damp 
outer  air  for  a  pail  of  water,  when  it  can  so  easily  and  so 
cheaply  be  conducted  to  her  hand  in  the  kitchen,  bake,  and 
wash-house,  or  dairy.  Many  screaming  babes  (and  the  sleep- 
less household  commiserating  the  little  sufferers)  have  pro- 
tested against  this  unthinking  barbarity  inflicted  on  them 
through  their  much-suffering  mothers.  And  many  blooming 
maidens  and  useful  wives  are  now  "  under  the  clods  of  the 
valley  "  because  of  colds  caught  by  running  out  in  the  bleak 
winds  or  frosty  air  for  a  pail  of  water  while  over-heated. 
And  even  the  parsimony  which  required  these  sacrifices  has 
been  pained  to  the  very  bottom  of  the  purse  by  the  reflection 
that  the  doctor's  and  undertaker's  bills,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
loss  of  valuable  services,  would  have  far  more  than  paid  all 
the  cost  of  conducting  the  water  to  where  it  was  needed  for 
use  from  spring,  well,  or  other  reservoir. 

But  whether  spring,  well,  or  cistern  be  employed,  examine 
them  often  and  carefully,  and  especially  each  spring  and  fall, 
and  have  them  thoroughly  cleansed  when  needed. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  665 

WATER   PIPES. 

Due  care  and  caution  should  be  used  in  the  selection  and 
use  of  pipes  for  conveying  and  distributing  water  to  the 
buildings.  Where  suitable  timber  is  cheap,  the  large  pipes 
(or  mains)  may  be  most  easily  and  cheaply  made  of  logs. 
Iron  is  probably  the  next  in  cheapness  in  some  sections. 
Earthen  mains,  when  properly  vitrified  (hard-burnt  and 
glazed)  are  sometimes  preferred.  And  for  distributing  pipes, 
where  zinc  or  tin  pipes  cannot  be  afforded,  lead  is  the  most 
common  material  —  and  against  the  action  of  vegetable  mat- 
ter, and  of  some  kinds  of  water,  on  this  mineral,  the  utmost 
caution  should  be  used.  Some  water,  as  the  Schuylkill, 
which  supplies  Philadelphia,  contains  an  element  which  forms 
on  the  inside  of  the  pipe  a  film  which  is  absolutely  impervious 
by  the  water,  and  protects  the  lead  against  all  corrosion  or 
chemical  change.  And  in  cities  and  large  towns,  where  the 
water  is  kept  running  almost  incessantly,  time  is  not  allowed 
for  chemical  action  on  the  lead,  where  the  sam^  water,  through 
the  same  pipes,  would  produce  speedy  sickness  in  a  farm- 
house. It  is  water  stagnant  in  a  lead  pipe  which  causes 
mischief,  so  that  every  faucet  should  be  allowed  to  run  the 
water  waste  for  at  least  one  minute  the  first  thing  in  the  morn- 
ing, especially  in  the  kitchen.  Comparatively  little  harm 
would  result  under  ordinary  circumstances  if,  while  the  leaden 
pipes  are  laid,  the  most  special  care  should  be  taken  as  to 
these  points :  — 

Allow  no  angles  in  the  pipes. 

Let  every  piece  of  pipe  which  is  horizontal  lie  perfectly 
straight. 

Have  all  curves  as  large  as  possible. 

Have  no  indentation  on  the  outside  of  the  pipe,  for  this 
may  cause  a  projection  on  the  inside. 

Be  at  great  pains  that  no  pebble  or  other  thing  shall  be  left 
in  the  pipe  at  the  time  of  its  being  laid. 

In  all  cases  (if  alone  to  prevent  clogging  and  uncleanness) 
have  a  suitable  screen  or  coarse  woollen  filter  placed  at  the 
point  where  the  spring  enters  the  pipes,  or  where  the  rain- 
water from  the  roofs  pours  into  the  pipes,  by  which  it  enters 


666  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

the  cistern,  so  as  to  exclude  all  moss,  leaves,  insects,  or  other 
matter  liable  to  decomposition. 

All  these  look  to  one  point — that  is,  the  prevention  of  any 
sediment  lodging  at  any  one  point,  for  where  this  occurs 
there  will  be  found  the  elements  of  corrosion  and  chemical 
change  from  which  the  poison  comes. 

KITCHEN. 

All  persons  of  cultivation  and  refinement  must  instinc- 
tively shrink  from  cooking  in  the  dark.  Hence,  it  should  be 
arranged  that  this  department  should  have  all  the  daylight 
possible,  and  also  that  the  "  back  yard,"  as  it  is  called,  and 
which  is  usually  in  the  rear  of  the  kitchen,  should  have  the 
advantage  of  abundant  sunshine,  so  as  to  keep  it  dry  and 
healthful. 

A  little  sink  near  a  kitchen  door-step,  inadvertently  formed, 
has  been  known,  although  not  exceeding  in  its  dimensions  a 
single  square  foot,  to  spread  sickness  through  a  whole  house- 
hold. Hence  everything  of  the  kind  should  be  studiously 
avoided,  so  that  there  should  be  no  spot  about  a  farm-house 
which  can  receive  and  hold  standing  water,  whether  it  be 
pure  rain  from  the  sky,  the  contents  of  a  wash-basin,  the 
slop-bowl,  or  the  water-pail. 

As  to  the  shape,  and  size,  and  height  of  the  rooms,  each 
builder  must  decide  for  himself,  according  to  his  taste  and 
the  length  of  his  purse.  A  square  building  gives  most  room 
for  the  same  money,  and  a  broad  hall  in  the  centre  of  the 
building  affords  greater  advantage  than  any  other  arrange- 
ment. 

"  High  ceilings,"  as  they  are  called,  are  now  much  the  fash- 
ion, but  they  are  more  costly  in  the  first  place,  and  occasion 
an  unnecessary  waste  of  fuel.  They  are  commended  for  their 
spaciousness,  but  they  sometimes  give  a  barn-like  appearance 
to  a  house,  and  are  never  so  cosy  as  rooms  which  are  not 
quite  so  high. 

Winding  stairs  are  objectionable  everywhere,  but  espe- 
cially in  the  country,  where  persons  rise  by  daylight  or  sooner, 
and  where  there  are  old  persons  or  young  children,  as  in  haste 
or  darkness  there  is  danger  of  falling,  and  breaking  or  dis- 
jointing the  limbs  or  neck. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  667 

It  is  a  great  saving  in  the  cost  of  furniture,  if,  in  the  erec- 
tion of  new  buildings,  and  in  the  modification  of  old  ones, 
large,  light,  and  roomy  closets  are  plentifully  supplied,  and 
with  them  shelves,  hooks,  and  drawers.  Many  persons  in 
the  country  when  "  dressed "  show  bad  housekeeping  and 
characteristic  slovenliness,  by  having  their  outer  garments 
marked  with  innumerable  creases,  showing  that  they  have 
been  thrown  negligently  into  a  drawer,  and  allowed  thus  to 
remain  from  one  going  out  to  another.  The  outer  dresses 
of  both  sexes  should  be  hung  up  in  closets,  protected  by 
doors  from  dust ;  and  to  this  end  every  farm-house  should 
have  a  great  abundance  of  closet  room.  These  closets  should 
always  be  large,  and  all  the  doors  should  be  hinged  within 
two  or  three  inches  of  the  wall,  so  that  there  may  be  no  dark 
corners  for  the  collection  of  dust  or  other  improper  things, 
or  for  the  hiding  of  what  is  valuable,  occasioning  the  loss  of 
valuable  time  in  searching  for  it.  For  the  same  reason  there 
should  be  no  closets  arranged  under  the  stairways,  unless 
they  are  lighted  in  some  way. 

Every  room  should  be  so  arranged,  if  possible,  that  there 
should  be  at  least  one  window  opposite  another,  or  a  door, 
so  that  the  room  may  be  speedily  and  thoroughly  ventilated 
by  opening  both  at  the  same  time.  Transoms,  or  movable 
sash  over  the  door,  are  very  essential  in  bed-rooms  in  securing 
ventilation. 

CHAMBERS. 

One  of  the  most  general,  and,  at  the  same  time,  one  of  the 
most  pernicious  errors  in  modern  architecture,  especially  in 
the  construction  of  private  dwellings,  is  founded  on  the  mis- 
chievous supposition  that  almost  any  place  is  good  enough  to 
sleep  in.  It  is  common  everywhere  to  set  apart  the  smallest 
rooms  in  the  house  for  sleeping  apartments.  To  show  what 
a  ruinous  mistake  this  is,  let  the  reader  remember  that  at 
least  one  third  of  a  man's  existence  is  spent  in  bed  in  sleep. 
Eight  hours  out  of  every  twenty-four  we  are  in  our  chambers. 
And  when  it  is  considered  that  air  is  essential  to  health,  that 
without  it  we  cannot  live  two  minutes,  it  must  be  of  material 
importance  whether  we  breathe  a  pure  or  impure  air  for  a 
third  of  our  existence.  A  full-sized  man  breathes  —  takes 
into  his  lungs  —  at  each  breath  about  a  pint  of  air ;  while  in 


668  FARMERS'  SOUSES. 

there,  all  the  life-nutriment  is  extracted  from  it,  and,  on  its 
being  sent  out  of  the  body,  it  is  so  entirely  destitute  of  life- 
giving  power  that  if  rebreathed  into  the  lungs  again,  without 
the  admixture  of  any  pure  air,  the  individual  would  suffocate — 
would  die  in  sixty  seconds.  As  a  man  breathes  about  eighteen 
times  in  a  minute,  and  a  pint  at  each  breath,  he  consumes 
over  two  hogsheads  of  air  every  hour,  or  about  sixteen  hogs- 
heads during  the  eight  hours  of  sleep  :  that  is,  if  a  man  were 
put  into  a  room  which  would  hold  sixteen  hogsheads  of  air, 
he  would,  during  eight  hours  of  sleep,  extract  from  it  every 
atom  of  life-nutriment,  and  would  die  at  the  end  of  the  eight 
hours,  even  if  each  breath  could  be  kept  to  itself,  provided 
no  air  came  into  the  room  from  without.  But  when  it  is  re- 
membered that  however  pure  the  air  of  the  whole  room  was 
at  first,  it  becomes  contaminated  by  the  first  expiration  ;  hence 
only  the  first  inspiration  is  pure,  and  each  one  thereafter  be- 
comes more  and  more  impure  unless  there  is  some  ventilating 
process  going  on. 

Every  individual  has,  in  his  own  experience,  demonstrative 
proof  of  the  impurity  of  the  air  of  a  room  in  which  a  person 
has  slept  all  night,  by  the  closeness  he  has  observed  on  enter- 
ing a  sleeping  apartment  after  a  morning's  walk;  and  this, 
even  when  more  or  less  fresh  air  has  been  coming  in  through 
the  crevices  about  the  doors  and  windows  during  the  whole 
night.  The  most  eminent  physiologists,  at  home  and  abroad, 
have  estimated  that  no  sleeping  apartment,  even  for  a  single 
person,  should  have  a  floor  surface  of  less  than  what  would 
equal  twelve  feet  long  and  twelve  feet  broad,  or  one  hundred 
and  forty-four  square  feet,  and  eight  or  ten  feet  high,  or  about 
twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  cubic  feet  to  each  sleeper.  But  the 
sleeping  apartments  of  hotels,  the  state-rooms  of  ships,  steam- 
boats, and  steamships,  do  not  average  one  third  of  that  cubic 
space  to  each  sleeper.  The  state-room  of  a  steamer  is  ordi- 
narily eight  feet  long,  seven  broad,  and  seven  high,  and  even 
these  are  adapted  for  two  sleepers.  As,  therefore,  each  out- 
breathing  vitiates  the  whole  air  of  a  room,  as  a  drop  of  milk 
will  discolor  the  whole  bulk  of  water  in  a  tumbler,  the  cham- 
bers for  the  members  of  farmers'  families  should  not  only  be 
large  and  commodious,  but  should  be  so  arranged  that  a  sys- 
tem of  ventilation,  at  least  to  a  small  extent,  shall  be  going 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  669 

on  all  the  time,  not  only  in  spite  of  inattention,  but  a  system 
which  cannot  be  easily  prevented,  which  is  accomplished  by 
the  simple  expedient  of  having  a  fireplace  in  each  room  which 
cannot  be  closed  with  screens  or  summer  blowers ;  for  by 
this  means  a  draught  will  be  made  by  the  cold  air  coming  in  at 
the  bottom  of  the  doors  and  from  other  places,  passing  over 
the  floor  towards  the  open  fireplace,  driving  the  heavy  car- 
bonic acid  gas  before  it  up  the  chimney. 

For  the  purpose  of  more  perfect  ventilation  of  each  apart- 
ment, especially  those  which  are  to  be  occupied  as  chambers, 
the  sashes  should  be  so  arranged  that-  they  can  be  let  down 
from  above  as  well  as  raised  from  below,  for  the  reason  that 
the  foul  air  of  a  room  rises  to  the  ceiling  in  warm  weather 
because  it  is  lighter  than  cold  air.  This  makes  room  for  the 
cold  air  from  without  to  rush  in  at  the  lower  part  of  the  win- 
dow ;  thus  a  circuit  or  draught  of  air  is  soon  formed,  admit- 
ting pure  air  from  below  and  driving  the  foul  air  out  of  the 
room  above.  But  every  chamber  should  be  so  constructed 
that  a  window  can  be  kept  open  or  raised,  more  or  less,  with- 
out having  the  draught  come  right  in  upon  the  sleeper ;  and 
it  is  safer  that  whatever  draught  there  is  should  pass  the  foot 
of  the  bed  rather  than  the  head,  because  the  feet  are  always 
covered.  Hence  it  is  not  so  easy  to  take  cold  nor  so  danger- 
ous. The  air  blowing  in  upon  a  sleeper's  head,  for  even  half 
an  hour,  has  often  caused  quinsy,  or  other  form  of  sore  throat, 
to  prove  fatal  in  the  course  of  a  very  few  days. 

Where  windows  are  already  constructed  so  that  they  cannot 
be  let  down  from  the  top,  there  is  an  admirable  contrivance 
by  which  a  draught  is  less  dangerous  than  in  from  the  window 
recommended  above.  Have  a  planed  board  made  the  breadth 
of  the  window  in  length  and  five  or  ten  or  more  inches  broad, 
raise  the  window,  then  close  the  space  made  with  this  board, 
allowing  the  lower  part  of  the  window  sash  to  rest  011  this 
board  so  as  to  hold  it  in  its  place.  This  allows  an  open  space 
between  the  glass  of  the  upper  and  lower  sash,  through  which 
the  cold  air  will  come  with  considerable  force,  with  the  cur- 
rent directed  upward,  towards  the  ceiling,  thus  making  it  quite 
safe  as  to  the  sleeper.  When  there  is  only  one  opening  into 
a  room  from  out-doors,  the  physical  lawr  which  governs  the 
atmosphere  operates  so  that  the  warm,  impure  air  goes  out- 


670  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

ward  at  the  upper  part  of  the  opening,  while  the  pure  air 
from  without  comes  in  below.  This  may  be  proven  any  win- 
ter's night  by  placing  a  lighted  candle  or  other  flame  at  the 
lower  opening,  when  the  flame  will  turn  inward ;  if  put  at  the 
top  it  will  tend  outward. 

If  a  neglect  of  these  things  were  invariably  followed  by 
death  before  morning,  attention  to  them  would  be  compelled. 
But,  although  the  deleterious  effects  do  not  thus  speedily  and 
impressively  follow,  they  do  inevitably  result  to  all  persons 
under  all  circumstances ;  coming  on  slowly,  it  is  true,  but 
none  the  less  surely  and  disastrously.  To  show  what  a  little 
taint  in  the  atmosphere  not  natural  to  it  may  affect  the  whole 
system,  it  is  only  necessary  to  state  an  observed  fact,  that  a 
man  who  sleeps  near  a  poppy  field,  with  the  wind  blowing 
towards  him  from  the  field,  will  die  before  morning.  A 
canary  bird,  in  its  cage,  hung  to  the  ceiling  of  a  curtained 
bed  where  there  were  two  sleepers,  was  found  dead  in  the 
morning.  Professor  Carpenter,  the  first  physiologist  in  Great 
Britain,  ascertained  that  an  atmosphere  containing  six  per 
cent,  of  carbonic  acid  gas  would  produce  immediate  death  ; 
and  that  less  than  half  that  amount  would  prove  fatal  in  a 
short  time.  But  every  expiration  of  a  sleeper  brings  out 
with  it  some  portion  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  and  disperses  it 
through  the  room ;  and  if  six  per  cent,  of  carbonic  acid  gas 
will  cause  speedy  death,  the  effects  of  breathing  it  nightly, 
even  in  very  small  quantities,  for  twenty  or  thirty  years,  can- 
not be  otherwise  than  pernicious  to  the  whole  system,  must 
lower  the  standard  of  human  health,  and  materially  shorten 
life. 

But  not  only  is  the  air  in  a  close  room  thus  constantly  be- 
ing impregnated  with  carbonic  acid  gas  to  the  amount  of 
about  twenty-eight  cubic  inches  per  minute  for  each  adult 
sleeper,  but  the  lungs  and  pores  of  the  skin  are  constantly 
discharging  an  equal  amount  by  weight  —  that  is,  three  and 
a  half  pounds  in  twenty-four  hours  —  of  effete,  decaying  ani- 
mal substance,  in  the  form  of  invisible  vapor,  which  we  often 
see  condensed  in  drops  upon  the  window  glass  of  crowded 
rooms,  rail  cars,  or  other  vehicles.  These  drops,  if  collected 
and  evaporated,  have  been  found  to  leave  a  thick,  putrid  mass 
of  animal  matter,  which  is  believed  to  be  quite  as  injurious 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  671 

as  carbonic  acid  gas  if  breathed  into  the  lungs ;  but  if  not  at 
all  injurious,  the  idea  must  be  abhorrent  to  every  feeling  of 
purity  of  taking  such  a  substance  into  our  bodies,  and  incor- 
porating it  into  the  very  blood  which  is  at  the  next  instant  to 
be  dashed  to  the  lips  and  tongue  for  food  and  nutriment. 

In  the  winter  of  1860,  a  man  named  Robertson,  his  wife, 
and  three  children,  were  in  the  habit  of  sleeping  in  one  small, 
ill-ventilated  room.  One  morning,  about  five  o'clock,  the 
wife  woke  in  a  very  exhausted  state,  and  found  her  infant  of 
nine  months  dead  in  her  arms.  She  immediately  aroused  her 
husband,  who  had  barely  strength  to  get  out  of  bed.  They 
next  discovered  that  their  son  of  three  years  of  age  was  also 
dead,  and  a  daughter  of  nine  in  an  apparently  dying  condi- 
tion, but  recovered  on  being  removed  to  another  apartment. 
Facts  like  these  show  that  breathing  a  bad  air  for  a  single 
night  is  perilous  to  life,  and  ought  to  have  an  impressive 
effect  on  the  mind  of  every  man  who  has  a  family  when  he 
is  contemplating  building  or  arranging  for  them  a  home 
for  life. 

Every  chamber,  then,  should  be  arranged  to  have  a  venti- 
lating process  going  on  all  the  time,  when  it  can  be  done  by 
having  an  open  fireplace  in  it ;  and  as  there  can  be  no  advan- 
tage, but  a  positive  injury,  resulting  from  sleeping  in  any 
room  colder  than  forty  degrees  above  zero  of  Fahrenheit,  a 
little  fire  should  be  kept  burning  in  the  grate  or  fireplace  un- 
der such  circumstances.  This  creates  a  draught  up  the  chim- 
ney, and  keeps  the  atmosphere  of  a  sleeping-room  compara- 
tively pure.  In  cases  of  sickness,  where  an  actual  fire  can- 
not be  kept,  an  admirable  substitute  will  be  found  in  placing 
a  large  lamp  in  the  fireplace,  to  be  kept  burning  all  night. 
This  creates  a  draught  without  making  much  heat,  and  is  a 
good  means  of  ventilating  a  sick  chamber  when  warmth  is 
not  desirable  ;  such,  for  example,  as  in  measles,  scarlet  fever, 
and  other  skin  diseases,  where  a  cool  air,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  pure  one,  is  an  indispensable  means  of  a  safe  and 
speedy  cure.  But  let  it  always  be  borne  in  mind  that  cold 
air  is  not  necessarily  pure,  nor  is  warm  air  necessarily 
impure. 

With  a  little  fire  in  a  cold  bed-room  not  only  is  the  cham- 
ber kept  ventilated,  but  fewer  bed-clothes  are  needed ;  less 


672  FARMERS*  BOUSES. 

clothing  docs  more  good  next  day,  while  there  is  a  freer 
escape  of  gases  and  exhalations  from  the  body  of  the  sleeper, 
and  the  person  wakes  up  in  the  morning  more  fresh  and 
vigorous. 

Chambers  should  not  only  be  constructed  with  a  view  to  a 
constant,  thorough,  and  unpreventable  ventilation,  but  also 
with  an  eye  to  their  perfect  dryness,  and  their  free  exposure 
to  the  sun  for  the  greater  portion  of  each  day. 

Florence  Nightingale,  whose  beautiful  name  and  more  beau- 
tiful character,  which  will  go  down  to  posterity  with  that  of 
John  Howard  and  Dorothea  Dix,  and  others  of  nature's  no- 
bility, writes,  after  long  years  of  experience  with  the  sick 
and  suffering,  "  A  dark  house  is  always  an  unhealthy  house, 
always  an  ill-aired  house,  always  a  dirty  house.  Want  of 
light  stops  growth  and  promotes  scrofula,  rickets,  &c.,  among 
children.  People  lose  their  health  in  a  dark  house,  and  if 
they  get  ill,  they  cannot  get  well  again  in  it.  Three  out  of 
many  negligences  and  ignorances  in  managing  the  health  of 
houses  generally  I  will  here  mention  as  specimens.  First, 
that  the  female  head  in  charge  of  any  building  does  not  think 
it  necessary  to  visit  every  hole  and  corner  of  it  every  day. 
How  can  she  expect  that  those  under  her  will  be  more  care- 
ful to  maintain  her  house  in  a  healthy  condition  than  she  who 
is  in  charge  of  it?  Second,  that  it  is  not  considered  essen- 
tial to  air,  to  sun,  and  clean  rooms  while  uninhabited,  which 
is  simply  ignoring  the  first  elementary  notion  of  sanitary 
things,  and  laying  the  ground  for  all  kinds  of  diseases.  Third, 
that  one  window  is  considered  enough  to  air  a  room.  Don't 
imagine  that  if  you  who  are  in  charge  don't  look  after  all 
these  things  yourself,  those  tinder  you  will  be  more  careful 
than  you  are.  It  appears  as  if  the  part  of  the  mistress  was 
to  complain  of  her  servants  and  accept  their  excuses,  not  to 
show  them  how  there  need  be  neither  complaints  nor  ex- 
cuses made." 

In  reference  to  the  same  subject,  and  in  confirmation  of 
what  has  been  already  stated  in  this  article,  Dr.  Moore,  the 
metaphysician,  thus  speaks  of  the  effect  of  light  on  body  and 
mind  :  "  A  tadpole  confined  in  darkness  would  never  become 
a  frog,  and  an  infant  being  deprived  of  Heaven's  free  light, 
will  only  grow  into  a  shapeless  idiot,  instead  of  a  beautiful 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  673 

and  responsible  being.  Hence,  in  the  deep,  dark  gorges  and 
ravines  of  the  Swiss  valleys,  where  the  direct  sunshine  never 
reaches,  the  hideous  prevalence  of  idiocy  startles  the  travel- 
ler. It  is  a  strange,  melancholy  idiocy ;  many  citizens  are 
incapable  of  any  articulate  speech ;  some  are  deaf,  some  are 
blind,  some  labor  under  all  these  privations,  and  are  mis- 
shapen in  almost  every  part  of  the  body." 

I  believe  there  is  in  all  places  a  marked  difference  in  the 
healthiness  of  houses,  according  to  their  aspect  with  regard 
to  the  sun  ;  and  those  are  decidedly  the  healthiest,  other  things 
being  equal,  in  which  all  the  rooms  are,  during  some  part 
of  the  day,  fully  exposed  to  the  direct  light.  Epidemics 
attack  inhabitants  on  the  shady  side  of  the  street,  and  totally 
exempt  those  on  the  other  side ;  and  even  in  epidemics,  .such 
as  ague,  the  morbid  influence  is  often  thus  partial  in  its 
labors. 

SMOKY   CHIMNEYS. 

This  household  calamity  can  easily  be  prevented,  and  al- 
ways in  building  new  houses  ;  thus,  let  the  throat  of  the  chim- 
ney be  so  constructed  that  immediately  inside  of  it  the  space 
shall  be  abruptly  increased  several  inches  in  length  and 
breadth.  Let  it  increase  upward  for  two  or  three  feet,  and 
then  be  gradually  drawn  in  to  the  dimensions  necessary,  and 
let  the  whole  inside  of  the  chimney  be  plastered  with  cement, 
which  will  harden  with  time. 

A  very  convenient  method  of  ventilating  a  room  already 
built  is,  to  arrange  that  one  of  the  panes  of  glass  in  the  upper 
sash  shall  move  on  a  pivot  at  the  centre  of  each  side,  so  that 
it  can  be  turned,  the  upper  end  outward,  the  lower  end  in- 
ward, or  vice  versa;  or,  to  prevent  breakage,  a  thin  board 
painted  white,  or  a  piece  of  tin  or  zinc,  may  be  made  to  re- 
place the  glass.  A  similar  arrangement  in  new  houses  will 
have  its  conveniences.  But  in  every  room  this  device  should 
be  near  the  ceiling,  above  the  fireplace.  For  ordinary  rooms 
the  orifice  should  be  a  foot  long  and  five  or  ten  inches  broad, 
arranged  so  that  a  cord  shall  open  or  close  it,  without  the 
necessity  of  getting  on  a  chair  or  step-ladder.  There  should 
be  a  door  opposite  every  fireplace.  This  diminishes  the 
chances  of  having  a  smoky  chimney,  for  in  fire-time  of  year 
the  cold  air  will  be  always  entering  the  room  at  the  crevices 


674  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

of  the  door,  and  in  the  direction  of  the  fireplace,  and  upward 
through  the  chimney.  The  draught  of  a  chimney  may  be  in- 
creased by  the  simple  expedient  of  cutting  out  a  small  part 
of  the  floor  with  a  saw,  so  that  it  may  be  easily  replaced 
after  the  fire  is  kindled.  No  chimney  will  draw  well  if  there 
is  any  wall  or  other  thing  near  which  is  higher  than  the  chim- 
ney itself. 

In  building  a  house  in  the  country  it  will  save  expense  and 
trouble,  besides  preparing  the  way  for  a  great  deal  of  comfort 
on  emergencies,  to  have  a  neat  opening  left  for  a  stove-pipe 
near  the  ceiling  in  every  room  in  the  house,  so  that,  in  case 
of  excessive  cold  weather,  a  common  stove  for  burning  wood 
(or  coal)  may  be  put  up,  and  thus  have  the  facilities  of  mak- 
ing at  least  each  room  in  the  house  comfortably  warm  during 
any  spell  of  bitter  cold  weather,  and  warmed,  too,  at  a  com- 
paratively small  expense  ;  for  let  it  be  remembered  that  with 
a  common  fireplace  or  grate  more  than  one  half  the  heat  goes 
up  the  chimney,  and  is  an  utter  waste.  The  longer  a  stove- 
pipe the  more  heat  is  saved  in  a  room ;  hence  the  advantage 
of  having  the  arrangement  for  receiving  the  stove-pipe  near 
the  ceiling.  Many  persons,  for  the  sake  of  appearance,  or  a 
mistaken  notion  of  economy  as  to  the  cost  of  pipe,  have  the 
pipe  adjusted  so  as  to  open  into  the  fireplace,  by" which  a  very 
large  amount  of  heat  is  lost. 

Much  has  been  said  of  the  injurious  effects  of  a  dry  stove 
air,  and  to  obviate  this  it  has  been  recommended  that  a  vessel 
of  water  be  kept  standing  on  the  stove.  If  this  is  left  to  be 
attended  to  by  the  servants  it  is  far  better  to  have  nothing  of 
the  kind,  because,  unless  the  pan  is  of  white  stone-ware,  and 
is  emptied,  washed,  and  filled  with  pure  fresh  water  every 
three  or  four  hours,  it  collects  dust,  dirt,  gases,  and  emana- 
tions, which,  by  being  kept  warm,  generate  a  most  pernicious 
malaria,  which  is  much  more  likely  to  produce  disease  than  a 
simple  dry  air.  It  should  be  remembered  that  a  room  is  very 
little  ventilated,  and  even  that  very  slowly,  by  simply  open- 
ing a  folding  door.  Many  persons  iguorantly,  and  to  their 
own  injury,  rely  upon  this  method  of  ventilation  when  they 
sleep  in  the  same  room  in  which  a  fire  has  been  kept  all  day ; 
and  for  this  reason,  also,  every  chamber  should  have  a  venti- 
lation arranged  in  the  original  construction  of  the  house. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  675 

The  coolest  part  of  a  room  in  warm  weather  for  sleeping  is 
the  floor ;  but,  by  the  operation  of  the  same  law  of  nature, 
that  cool  air  is  heavy  and  fulls  to  the  surface.  The  healthiest 
part  of  a  chamber  in  very  cold  weather  is  the  higher.  A 
sleeping  person  consumes  two  hogsheads  of  air  an  hour  — 
that  is,  deprives  it  of  all  its  oxygen,  and  replaces  it  with 
carbonic  acid  gas,  which  is  a  negative  poison,  leaving  it  so 
destitute  of  any  life-giving  property  that  the  person  breath- 
ing it  will  die  in  a  short  time.  This  is  the  operation  going  on 
in  a  close  room  where  charcoal  is  burning  in  an  open  vessel. 
The  oxygen  is  consumed  in  burning  the  coal,  and  its  place  is 
supplied  by  carbonic  acid. 

Cold  condenses  this  carbonic  acid,  makes  it  heavy,  and 
causes  it  to  settle  on  the  floor.  It  has  been  so  condensed  by 
cold  as  to  be  made  visible  in  the  shape  of  a  snow-white  sub- 
stance, just  as  the  invisible,  warm,  moist  air,  by  the  applica- 
tion of  cold,  is  reduced  to  mist,  to  dew,  to  rain-drops,  and 
to  solid  hailstones. 

There  are  some  localities  in  Italy  and  elsewhere,  into  which 
if  a  man  and  his  dog  come,  the  dog  will  die  in  a  minute  or 
two,  while  his  master  will  remain  uninjured.  There  was  car- 
bonic acid  there.  It  was  concentrated,  condensed,  made 
heavy,  and  settled  on  the  surface,  where  the  dog  breathed  it ; 
but  the  man's  nostrils  being  four  or  five  feet  higher  took  in 
none  of  it.  From  these  facts,  two  practical  lessons  of  very 
great  importance  to  human  health  and  life  are  drawn. 

First.  There  is  more  need  of  ventilating  a  chamber  in 
winter  than  in  summer. 

Second.  There  is  no  advantage,  as  to  health,  in  sleeping 
in  a  very  cold  room  —  cold  enough  to  have  ice  formed  in  it 
during  the  night.  Thousands  of  persons,  who  have  gone  to 
bed  in  perfect  health  at  night  have  waked  up  next  morning 
with  pneumonia,  —  that  is,  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  —  and 
have  died  in  a  few  days,  because  the  room  was  too  cold  for 
them,  to  say  nothing  of  the  debilitating  effect  of  breathing 
an  atmosphere  more  or  less  loaded  with  carbonic  acid  gas, 
which  deprived  the  system  of  its  ability  to  resist  the  ap- 
proach of  disease.  Had  the  room  been  well  ventilated,  the 
attack  would  have  been  less  severe,  or  there  might  have  been 
none  at  all,  because  the  breathing  of  a.  pure  air  would  have 


676  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

given  power  to  ward  off  any  ordinary  attack  of  sickness. 
Hence  they  are  the  most  conclusive  reasons  for  building 
houses,  or  remodelling  them,  so  as  to  have  the  utmost  facil- 
ities for  ventilation. 

Really  every  chamber  should  have  two  systems  of  ventila- 
tion —  internal  and  external ;  so  that  either  may  be  em- 
ployed, according  to  the  season  of  the  year,  and  the  health 
and  vigor  or  peculiarity  of  the  sleepers.  The  internal  venti- 
lation —  that  is,  openings  above  the  fireplaces  —  for  feeble 
persons,  or  for  very  cold  weather,  or  in  the  autumn ;  the  ex- 
ternal—  that  is,  through  the  windows  from  all  out-doors  — 
for  the  vigorous,  and  in  moderate  weather. 

To  some  persons  in  any  latitude,  and  to  all  in  some  sec- 
tions of  the  country,  it  is  certain  suffering  to  sleep  with  an 
open  window,  especially  in  August  and  September ;  and  by 
understanding  the  reason  of  this  fully,  the  necessity  may  be 
removed  from  some  families  of  selling  out,  or  of  building 
elsewhere. 

Before  changing  a  residence  on  account  of  its  being  un- 
healthful,  it  should  first  be  noticed  whether  it  is  connected 
with  any  special  season  of  the  year,  with  any  special  part  of 
the  house,  or  any  particular  habit  of  the  persons  who  are 
attacked ;  in  other  words,  does  the  sickness  appear  during 
the  autumnal  months  ?  Does  it  appear  among  that  part  of 
the  family  sleeping  on  the  same  side  of  the  house,  —  on  the 
northern  side  for  example,  —  keeping  the  rooms  always  more 
or  less  damp,  or  in  that  part  of  the  building  nearest  to  some 
pond,  or  marsh,  or  sluggish  stream,  or  whether,  of  several 
persons  sleeping  on  the  same  side,  only  those  are  attacked 
who  sleep  with  their  windows  open? 

As  a  general  rule,  young  children,  invalids,  infirm  and  old 
people,  should  have  their  chambers  during  the  night  venti- 
lated from  within,  and  so  should  all  families  living  in  bottoms* 
on  low  lands,  near  ponds,  sluggish  streams,  marshes,  or  re- 
cently cleared  lands,  especially  during  the  autumnal  months, 
or  where  there  is  more  or  less  chill  and  fever,  fever  and  ague, 
etc.  The  reason  for  this  is,  that  from  these  localities  miasm 
constantly  rises,  and  comes  through  the  open  windows  upon 
the  sleeper,  who  breathes  it  into  his  lungs,  corrupting  and 
poisoning  his  whole  blood  in  a  night. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  C77 

Many  cases  are  given  in  standard  medical  publications, 
where  persons  sleeping  in  certain  parts  of  a  building  suddenly 
became  ill,  although  they  formerly  had  good  health,  and  had 
occupied  the  same  chambers,  and  had  slept  with  open  win- 
dows all  the  time.  But  a  change  of  dwelling,  or  a  determi- 
nation to  build  elsewhere,  should  not  be  hastily  made  by  the 
farmer,  for  some  standing  water  may  have  been  drawn  off 
recently  for  a  mere  temporary  purpose,  —  the  repairing  of  a 
mill-dam  for  example,  —  and  when  reflooded,  so  as  to  cover 
the  wet,  muddy  bottom  several  feet  in  water,  the  sickness 
will  immediately  disappear;  or  a  belt  of  timber  between  the 
dwelling  and  some  standing  miasm-producing  water  may  have 
been  cut  down  ;  if  so,  a  substitute  should  be  provided  by 
planting  a  thick  hedge  of  sunflowers,  or  other  rapidly  grow- 
ing and  luxuriant  vegetation. 

The  lower  floor  of  every  country  house  should  be  on  the 
same  level,  for  every  step  upward  taken  by  domestics  and 
women  in  the  family,  is  not  only  a  useless  expenditure  of 
strength  (and  a  large  portion  of  it,  too,  when  it  is  consid- 
ered how  many  times  a  day  the  cook,  and  housemaid,  and  the 
wives  and  daughters,  who  do  the  household  work,  must  go  in 
and  out,  and  pass  and  repass  from  one  room  to  another) ,  but 
it  is  physiologically  a  great  strain  upon  those  internal  organs 
which  are  peculiar  to  the  sex ;  and  when  too  much  of  it  is 
done,  diseases  are  every  day  induced  which  are  to  embitter 
the  whole  after-existence.  It  is  very  easy  to  wink  the  eye,  — 
an  inappreciable  effort,  —  but  if  a  man  attempts  to  do  it  a 
hundred  times  in  succession,  its  repetition  becomes  a  painful 
effort.  It  is  very  easy  to  step  up  a  step  or  two,  but  the 
strongest  will  pant  and  blow  if  a  hundred  have  to  be  gone  up 
as  briskly  as  an  ordinary  cook  steps  about. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  objection  does  not  apply  because 
only  one  step  is  taken  at  a  time  ;  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  those  who  do  housework  almost  always  have  something 
in  hand  —  a  bucket  of  water,  a  pile  of  plates,  an  armful  of 
\vood,  a  scuttle  of  coal,  etc.,  — and  these  must  be  raised  that 
one  step,  besides  the  body  of  the  person,  altogether  weighing 
between  one  and  two  hundred  pounds.  A  certain  amount  of 
strength  is  expended  in  this  unnecessary  effort,  and  however 
small  it  is,  each  repetition  of  it  is  that  much  taken  from  the 


678  FARMERS'  BOUSES. 

store  of  strength  with  which  the  person  arose  in  the  morning. 
A  purse  containing  a  hundred  dollars  is  as  much  depleted  by 
taking  out  a  dollar  at  a  time  until  fifty  are  withdrawn,  as  if 
the  whole  fifty  were  extracted  at  once. 

The  kitchen  should,  as  far  as  practicable,  be  central  to  the 
whole  house,  having  the  dining-room  on  one  side,  the  wood- 
house,  and  the  place  for  meats,  milk,  and  vegetables  on  anoth- 
er, unless  these  are  all  kept  in  the  cellar,  located  as  previ- 
ously advised.  If,  however,  the  dairy  is  an  important  item 
about  the  farm,  that  is,  if  it  is  intended  as  a  source  of  income, 
it  should  be  arranged  by  all  means  to  be  on  the  side  of  a  hill 
or  rising  ground,  if  possible,  over  a  spring,  otherwise  in  such 
a  way  that  a  natural  stream  should  flow  through  it,  or  that 
the  surplus  water  of  the  well,  or  spring,  or  cistern  should  do 
so ;  but  by  all  means  let  the  dairy  be  approached  from  the 
kitchen  by  a  raised  gravel  walk,  with  a  view  to  have  it  as 
dry  as  possible  at  all  seasons,  for  this  walk  must  be  passed 
over  many  times  a  day,  and  if  not  dry  it  dampens  the  feet, 
and  thus  endangers  the  health. 

WATER    CONVENIENCES. 

If  water  is  not  supplied  by  artificial  means,  so  as  to  come 
into  the  kitchen  by  pipes  and  a  faucet,  it  should  be  arranged 
to  have  the  well,  or  fcistern,  or  spring  deliver  its  supply  in  an 
apartment  immediately  adjoining  the  kitchen,  on  the  same 
level,  and  without  going  outside  of  the  house.  It  cannot  be 
truthfully  denied  that  multitudes  of  women  lose  health  and 
life  itself  every  year  by  having  to  step  out  from  the  dry,  warm 
floor  of  the  kitchen  upon  the  cold  stones  and  wet  path  out- 
side, going  to  the  spring,  wood-yard,  and  smoke-house.  And, 
with  the  experiences  and  harrowing  narrations  which  daily 
come  to  physicians  from  this  direction,  that  farmer  is  crimi- 
nally remiss,  who,  in  building  a  new  house  or  reconstructing 
an  old  one,  does  not  arrange  to  have  a  dry  and  level  floor 
for  those  who  do  the  cooking,  washing,  and  general  house- 
work of  the  family,  so  as  to  make  dairy,  cellar,  wood-house, 
water-closets,  and  smoke-house  easily  accessible  by  a  dry 
pathway. 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  679 


PRIVIES    AND   WATER-CLOSETS. 

The  location  of  these  in  connection  with  a  family  residence 
has  an  important  bearing  on  the  health  of  any  family,  or  a 
greater  influence  on  the  destiny  of  many  than  would  be  sup- 
posed by  other  than  a  medical  practitioner,  from  the  operation 
of  a  single  law  of  the  animal  economy  in  connection  with  a 
fact  to  be  afterwards  stated,  which  no  observant  person  can 
truthfully  deny.  It  is  of  the  very  first  importance  that  the 
water-closet  should  be  always  and  instantly  and  easily  acces- 
sible, as  in  proportion  as  this  is  not  the  case,  the  calls  of  na- 
ture are  postponed.  This  never  can  be  done  with  impunity, 
for  nature  never  does  anything  in  vain  nor  out  of  time.  But 
it  is  singular  to  observe  how  she  never  allows  herself,  as  it 
were,  to  be  trifled  with ;  if  her  call  is  not  heeded,  it  is  less 
and  less  urgent ;  her  appeals  to  the  nerves  of  sensation  are 
less  and  less  strong,  until  they  cease  to  be  felt ;  the  inclina- 
tion passes  off,  and  it  may  be  hours  before  she  has  recovered 
strength  to  call  again,  but  with  this  unvarying  result :  the 
next  day  the  call  is  made  later,  and  later,  and  later,  until 
after  a  while  it  is  omitted  for  a  whole  day,  and  before  the 
person  is  aware  of  it,  it  is  found  that  the  bowels  are  consti- 
pated —  that  several  days  pass  without  an  evacuation,  and 
with  this  certain  uncomfortable  feelings  are  observed,  entirely 
new  to  the  person  in  question ;  they  are  simply  symptoms, 
the  indications  that  disease  is  setting  up  in  the  system,  such 
as  headache,  cold  feet,  bad  taste  in  the  mouth  on  getting  up 
in  the  morning,  an  irregular  appetite,  qualmishness,  an  ab- 
sence of  accustomed  vivacity ;  and  in  due  time  there  is  actual 
disease,  in  the  shape  of  sick  headache,  sour  stomach,  piles, 
wasting  diarrhoea,  catarrh,  "the  least  thing  in  the  world  gives 
me  a  cold,"  dyspepsia,  with  all  its  horrors,  or  a  general  de- 
cline of  the  whole  system.  Every  observant  physician  knows 
that  more  than  half  of  all  ordinary  diseases  have  their  foun- 
dations laid  in  a  constipated  condition  of  the  bowels  ;  that  is, 
a  failure  in  them  to  act  every  day  with  almost  the  regularity 
of  the  rising  of  the  sun ;  and  he  further  knows  that  the  be- 
ginning of  this  irregularity  was  brought  about  by  deferring 
the  calls  of  nature  until  company  was  gone,  until  the  chapter 
was  finished,  until  the  newspaper  was  looked  over,  until  some 


680  FARMERS'   HOUSES. 

work  in  hand  was  completed,  or  until  the  "coast  was  clear." 
It  is  in  this  as  in  thousands  of  other  eases  that  the  greatest 
of  calamities  arises  sometimes  from  almost  inappreciable 
causes  ;  and  in  all  human  record  there  is  not  a  stronger  exem- 
plification of  it  than  in  the  case  in  hand.  There  are  thou- 
sands and  tens  of  thousands  of  intelligent  and  observant 
persons  in  mature  life,  and  still  later  on  in  years,  who  would 
cheerfully  give  a  large  portion  of  what  they  possess  if  they 
could  have  a  natural,  regular  action  of  the  bowels  every  day 
without  any  artificial  aid,  and  who  can  and  do  look  back  in 
vain  remorse  to  the  times  when  there  was  a  proper  and  health- 
ful regularity,  and  to  the  occasions  and  manner  of  their  first 
breaking  into  it,  simply  for  the  want  of  a  little  personal  en- 
ergy, a  little  self-denial,  a  small  modicum  of  force  of  will, 
which  would  resolutely,  and  even  impatiently,  clear  out  of  its 
path  those  trifling,  those  cobweb  obstacles,  which  were  in  the 
way  of  our  physical  duty,  as  it  were.  But  it  is  not  always 
that  nature  allows  persons  to  escape  with  a  moderate,  or  pro- 
tracted, or  slow  punishment.  There  are  multitudes  of  cases 
recorded  where,  from  motives  of  false  delicacy,  as  riding  in 
public  vehicles,  waiting  for  others,  or  for  daybreak  to  come, 
or  from  sheer  laziness,  the  power  to  pass  water  has  been  taken 
away,  acute  inflammation  has  set  in,  and  death  has  followed 
in  two  or  three  days.  It  is  well  worth  while,  then,  to  say  all 
that  has  been  said,  if  by  it  a  single  family  should,  in  the  erec- 
tion of  a  new  house,  or  in  the  remodelling  of  an  old  one,  be 
led  to  make  a  wise  and  practical  use  of  the  facts  which  have 
been  presented,  in  having  a  privy  constructed  with  two  or 
three  apartments,  appropriated  to  the  different  classes  of  the 
family,  so  that  one  may  never  need  have  to  wait  on  another 
for  a  single  instant,  and  also  that  approaches  may  be  made 
with  as  much  privacy  as  practicable,  and  by  a  path  protected 
from  the  weather,  to  be  used  when  inclement,  and  by  another 
to  be  used  in  good  weather,  and  still  as  distant  from  the  house 
as  can  be  conveniently  arranged ;  for  example,  to  be  ap- 
proached through  the  wood-house  or  perhaps  through  the 
garden.  The  deposits  should  be  made  in  a  water-tight  plank 
box,  placed  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  on  runners  or  wheels, 
to  be  removed  and  emptied  once  a  week,  and  buried  in  a  com- 
post heap.  The  faeces  of  one  individual  will  fertilize  an  acre 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  681 

of  ground  every  year  to  an  extent  greater  than  any  ordinary 
compost.  In  addition,  for  the  seven  warmer  months  of  the 
year,  lime  or  fresh  ashes  of  wood  should  be  scattered  around 
the  receptacle  every  fortnight,  while  a  gallon  or  two  of  the 
following  solution  should  be  thrown  into  the  receptacle  itself 
every  week  or  two :  one  pound  of  copperas,  known  as  sul- 
phate of  iron,  costing  but  a  few  cents,  dissolved  in  four  gal- 
lons of  water,  will  most  completely  destroy  all  offensive  odors, 
whether  in  sinks,  privies,  or  cellars.  The  warmer  the  weather 
the  oftener  must  the  application  be  repeated.  Sprinkling  the 
copperas  itself  is  advantageous,  and,  if  in  cellars,  is  one  of 
the  best  means  of  keeping  rats  away. 

One  of  the  most  sensible  thoughts  in  this  connection,  and 
one  which  would  scarcely  occur  to  any  other  than  one  of  the 
members  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  so  remarkable  for  their 
thoughtfulness  and  happy  talent  of  having  about  them  all  the 
conveniences  and  appliances  which  so  much  add  to  the  com- 
forts and  enjoyments  of  domestic  life,  was  in  having  a  privy 
connected  with  his  barn,  for  the  convenience  of  his  gentlemen 
friends  who  visit  him  in  the  summer  at  his  delightful  mansion 
on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson.  This  is  one  of  the  earliest  pieces 
of  information  given  to  those  coming  for  the  first  time.  To 
this  they  can  repair  at  any  hour  with  a  feeling  of  perfect 
privacy. 

PIAZZAS. 

There  can  be  no  good  reason  why  a  piazza,  from  eight  to 
twelve  feet  broad,  should  not  extend  the  whole  front  or  end 
and  part  of  the  rear  of  every  farm-house ;  and,  considering 
the  personal  advantages  of  such  an  arrangement,  and  the  air 
of  coolness,  and  beauty,  and  liveliness  which  they  present  in 
summer,  it  must  be  put  down  as  a  great  oversight  in  that  they 
are  not  more  common  than  they  are.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  they  contribute  greatly  to  the  coolness  of  the  lower 
rooms  in  warm  weather,  and  afford  facilities  for  play  to  the 
children  in  inclement  or  muddy  weather,  and  for  exercise  to 
grown  persons,  which  are  of  inestimable  value  in  promoting 
health.  It  would  surprise  most  persons  greatly  to  know  how 
many  girls  in  the  country  have  fixed  diseases  grafted  in  them 
before  they  leave  their  teens  ;  this  is  most  strikingly  the  case 
with  the  daughters  of  farmers  who  are  "well  off"  and  actually 


682  FARMERS' '  HO  USES. 

rich.  This  comes  about  largely  from  the  fact  th.it  they  have 
not  the  inducements  of  exercise  half  equal  to  similar  classes 
in  large  towns  and  cities.  They,  perhaps,  sweep  a  room,  or 
dust  the  parlors,  or  make  up  a  bed  or  two  in  the  morning ; 
and  that  is  about  all  the  exercise  they  take  on  foot  during  the 
day,  except  when  they  have  visitors ;  the  remainder  of  the 
time  they  sit  and  sew,  or  read,  or  loll  about,  not  altogether 
because  they  do  not  want  to  exercise  themselves,  but  because 
there  are  not  the  facilities  of  doing  so  in  the  way  most  agree- 
able to  them.  Few  farmers  have  a  spare  horse  suitable  for  a 
girl  to  ride,  and  if  they  did,  she  must  have  some  one  to  ride 
•with  her ;  that  requires  a  second  horse,  and  the  brother  or 
father  must  accompany  her.  These  circumstances  narrow 
down  the  chances  of  horseback  exercise,  exclusive  of  church- 
going  days,  to  about  a  dozen  or  two  hours  in  a  year  to  eleven 
farmers'  daughters  in  a  dozen.  And  however  inclined  to 
walk,  it  is  impracticable  in  winter,  because  they  must  step 
from  the  door-sill  into  mud,  or  slush,  or  snow.  In  summer 
it  is  too  hot  in  the  middle  of  the  day ;  in  the  morning  the 
grass  is  bedewed ;  and  so  in  the  evening,  unless  it  is  early, 
say  just  before  sundown,  when  it  is  not  altogether  safe  to  be 
out  of  sight  of  the  house.  All  these  are  deemed  satisfactory 
excuses  for  neglect  of  a  plain  duty.  If  there  were  commo- 
dious piazzas,  there  would  be  admirable  facilities  for  walking 
at  all  seasons,  and  every  day  for  games,  rope-jumping;  plays, 
and  promenades  of  every  description ;  and  by  reducing  it  to 
a  system,  an  amount  of  exercise  in  the  open  air  could  be 
taken  every  day,  the  value  of  which  upon  the  physical  health, 
the  mental  power,  and  general  vivacity,  cannot  be  readily 
estimated. 

In  building  a  new  house,  or  remodelling  an  old  one,  the 
upper  rooms,  the  chambers  especially,  when  practicable, 
should  be  so  arranged  that  the  sun  should  shine  into  them 
as  much  as  possible  to  give  the  light,  and  dryness,  and  cheer- 
fulness which  so  much  contribute  to  the  healthfulness  of  a 
chamber,  and  the  lively,  cheerful  temper  of  those  who  occu- 
py them.  All  farm-houses  should  be  arranged,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, so  that  the  rooms  which  are  most  generally  occupied 
should  have  most  of  the  sun  during  the  day.  It  is  too  often 
the  case  that  the  parlor,  the  company  room,  is  the  largest, 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  683 

lightest,  and  best  room  in  the  building ;  this  parlor  is  barri- 
caded with  curtains,  window  shutters,  and  closed  doors,  ex- 
cept when  there  is  company,  which  will,  perhaps,  average 
not  a  dozen  half  days  in  the  year;  the  remainder  of  the 
time  all  its  sweetness  is 

"  Wasted  in  the  desert  air." 

By  all  means  let  the  best  room  in  the  house  be  enjoyed 
every  day  by  the  members  of  the  family  ;  give  the  room  which 
is  largest  and  lightest  to  your  own  wife  and  children  all  the 
time,  instead  of  saving  it  for  other  people  for  a  dozen  hours 
in  the  year.  Besides,  such  a  room,  almost  always  closed  up, 
is  a  positive  injury  to  every  person  who  enters  it ;  for  in  win- 
ter it  has  a  pernicious  closeness  about  it,  while  in  summer 
there  is  a  mustiuess  and  dampness,  often  a  chilliness,  present, 
which  makes  it  feel  almost  sepulchral  the  moment  it  is  entered. 

HOUSE-WALLS. 

Wall-papers,  like  carpets,  are  the  inventions  of  laziness  and 
filth  ;  they  conceal  dirt  and  noisomeness  of  every  description. 
The  milk-white  floors  and  white-plastered  walls  of  olden  time 
have  almost  entirely  disappeared,  to  the  great  detriment  of 
family  purity  and  personal  health.  It  is  greatly  to  be  regret- 
ted that  this  is  the  case  to  the  extent  that  it  is.  White-plas- 
tered walls  can  be  kept  clean  for  a  number  of  years  ;  the  lime 
in  them  has  the  effect  to  purify  them.  Next  to  this  the 
painted  wall,  covered  well  with  a  suitable  varnish ;  for  it  can 
be  readily  washed  without  injury,  and  is  easily  kept  free  of 
dust.  In  cases  where  walls  must  be  papered,  if  for  the  first 
time,  there  are  two  important  precautions :  use  no  paper 
which  has  a  green  color,  especially  a  fuzzy  green,  which  is 
composed  of  arsenic,  and  is  capable  of  causing  convulsions 
and  fatal  disease  in  a  single  night.  Children  have  been  taken 
extremely  ill  after  playing  a  few  hours  in  a  small  room  cov- 
ered with  paper  which  had  considerable  green-colored  pat- 
terns on  it.  Care  should  be  taken  that  the  paste  should  be 
fresh,  and  put  on  equally  and  thin,  and  that  any  holes  in  the 
wall  should  be  filled  up  with  plaster.  A  tidy  room  in  a  cer- 
tain dwelling  was  appropriated  to  lodgers.  It  was  noticed, 
after  a  time,  that  as  certainly  as  a  person  slept  in  that  room 


684        *  FARMERS1  HOUSES. 

a  single  night,  severe  sickness  next  day  was  the  result.  The 
authorities  ordered  an  investigation,  when  it  was  found  that 
a  depression  in  the  wall  had  been  filled  up  by  one  of  the 
workmen  by  gathering  up  a  bucketful  of  pieces  of  paper  and 
some  remnants  of  paste  to  make  them  .adhere.  After  a  time 
decomposition  began  to  take  place,  giving  out  emanations  of 
the  most  poisonous  character;  and  for  this  reason,  if  any 
wall  of  plaster  or  of  wooden  partition  is  to  be  papered  or  re- 
papered,  it  should  be  thoroughly  cleaned  first,  then  made 
smooth ;  every  particle  of  old  paper  should  be  removed. 

The  way  in  which  the  smallest  amount  of  money  can  be 
made  to  go  farthest  on  a  farm,  morally  and  pecuniarily,  is  by 
investing  it  in  lime  and  white  lead.  Filth,  dirt,  darkness, 
and  untidiness  always  and  inevitably  degrade  those  who 
dwell  among  them.  Cleanliness  purifies  and  elevates.  If 
whitewash  is  used,  it  should  be  applied  every  year  to  what- 
ever is  exposed  to  wind  and  weather;  that  which  is,  perhaps, 
the  cheapest,  most  durable,  and  most  generally  available,  is 
made  thus  :  one  ounce  of  white  vitriol,  —  that  is,  sulphate  of 
zinc,  —  and  three  ounces  of  common  salt  to  every  four  pounds 
of  fresh  lime,  which  is  lime  not  fallen  into  any  powder  from 
exposure  to  the  atmosphere,  with  water  enough  to  make  it 
sufficiently  thin  to  be  applied  with  a  brush ;  this  makes  a 
durable  out-door  whitewash.  When  white  paint  is  used,  two 
precautions  are  necessary :  first,  obtain  a  good  article  of 
white  lead  from  a  dealer  whom  you  know  to  be  honest.  There 
is,  perhaps,  not  one  pound  of  pure  white  lead  in  a  million 
that  is  sold  for  pure  white  lead,  as  there  is  a  substance  called 
barytes,  which  can  be  purchased  by  the  ton  for,  perhaps,  less 
than  a  cent  a  pound,  which,  when  mixed  with  white  lead, 
cannot  be  distinguished  until  some  time  after  it  is  spread, 
when  it  becomes  dark.  When  it  is  remembered  that  white 
lead  sells  for  ten  times  as  much  per  pound,  the  temptation  to 
adulterate  is  too  strong  for  the  honesty  of  any  white  lead 
manufacturer  known  to  the  writer.  The  proportion  of  this 
adulteration  is  from  ten  to  ninety  per  cent.  Zinc  paint  is 
used  especially  for  inside  work,  and  makes  a  beautiful  glossy 
white  finish ;  second,  the  preservative  power  of  white  paint 
depends,  in  considerable  measure,  on  the  time  of  year.  If  in 
hot  weather,  the  water  of  the  oil  evaporates  so  quickly  that 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  *         685 

the  paint  itself  is  not  carried  into  the  wood,  and  remains  as  a 
powder  on  the  surface,  and  can  be  wiped  off  with  the  fingers. 
If  in  the  inclement  weather  of  winter,  it  is  apt  to  be  washed 
off  by  the  rains  before  it  has  sufficiently  dried.  The  autumn 
is  best,  when  the  ground  is  not  likely  to  be  dusty,  and  when 
the  weather  is  long  enough  dry  to  allow  the  paint  to  get 
thoroughly  dry  itself.  Out-door  wood-work  should  be  paint- 
ed once  in  every  three  years,  if  white,  but  colored  paints  last 
much  longer ;  nor  is  white  the  most  desirable  color  for  a 
farm-house  in  all  situations,  and  if  done  as  just  proposed,  it 
not  only  preserves  the  building  far  beyond  the  cost  of  its  ap- 
plication, but  it  gives  an  air  of  thrift,  and  life,  and  beauty,  of 
which  almost  every  reader  has  had  personal  experience.  And 
in  case  of  wishing  to  sell  a  farm  thus  kept  painted  and  white- 
washed, as  to  its  fences  and  buildings,  a  better  price  can 
always  be  had,  and  from  a  better  and  more  elevated  class 
of  purchasers. 

ICE-HOUSES. 

are  beginning  to  be  considered  indispensable  appendages  to  a 
farmer's  house,  and,  indeed,  to  every  man  who  owns  his 
premises.  They  are  not  a  necessity,  and  where  there  is  a 
good  spring,  or  never-failing  well,  they  can  be  dispensed 
with,  especially  as  they  do  not  contribute  to  the  general 
health  of  any  family,  unless  the  use  of  ice  is  wisely  controlled. 
The  free  use  of  ice-water  tends  to  the  decay  of  teeth  prema- 
turely, is  liable  to  produce  dangerous  inflammations  of  the 
stomach,  and  certainly  is  the  immediate  cause  of  dyspeptic 
diseases  in  multitudes  of  cases  where  it  is  freely  indulged  in 
at  the  regular  meals  of  the  day.  At  the  same  time,  as  many 
will  prefer  building  ice-houses,  it  is  proper  here  to  give  some 
directions  in  reference  to  the  subject. 

That  ice  keeps  better  ordinarily  above  ground  than  below, 
and  that  ventilation  is  necessary  in  order  to  its  well-keeping, 
are  two  indisputable  facts.  The  more  compact  the  ice  is,  the 
longer  will  it  keep  ;  hence  plans  have  been  devised  of  letting 
a  stream  of  water  run  slowly  into  the  ice-house  after  it  has 
been  filled,  so  that  all  the  crevices  may  be  filled  up ;  or, 
where  a  running  stream  is  available,  some  persons  have 
arranged  to  let  the  water  in  a  foot  deep  during  very  cold 
weather ;  when  this  has  frozen  solid,  let  in  a  few  inches  more, 


686  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

until  the  house  is  entirely  filled ;  or  it  can  be  done  with  less 
trouble  and  attention,  if  during  very  severe  weather  the  water 
is  conveyed  into  the  ice-house  during  the  night,  by  or  from  a 
running  stream,  in  a  very  fine  spray,  freezing  as  it  falls. 
There  should  be  a  double  roof;  the  under  part  of  the  rafters 
should  be  boarded  closely,  and  between  that  and  the  shingles 
a  space  of  eight  or  ten  inches  or  more  should  be  filled  up 
with  saw-dust,  spent  tan-bark,  or  other  porous  substances. 
There  should  be  a  space  between  the  straw  on  the  surface  of 
the  ice  and  the  roof  for  purpose  of  ventilation,  to  prevent 
the  air  from  becoming  damp  and  close,  with  a  wooden  chim- 
ney of  eight  or  ten  inches  square  piercing  the  roof;  or  a  slid- 
ing panel  in  the  door  would  answer ;  the  ventilation  must  not 
be  a  current  of  air.  If  the  eaves  of  the  roof  extend  a  foot 
or  two  over  the  sides,  a  greater  protection  is  afforded  against 
rain  and  the  rays  of  the  sun.  The  roof  of  an  ice-house 
should  be  steep.  Great  care  should  be  taken  against  leakages 
of  this  as  well  as  of  all  other  farm  buildings.  A  cement  may 
be  applied  with  a  trowel  or  case-knife  to  all  leaks  in  roofs,  or 
about  chimneys,  &c.,  made  thus:  Take  pure  white  lead  and 
mix  it  with  boiled  oil  until  it  is  ol  the  thickness  of  thin  paint, 
add  to  this  common  sand  until  of  the  thickness  of  common 
mortar;  there  is,  perhaps,  nothing  better  than  this.  A  space 
twelve  feet  in  the  clear  in  every  direction  will  hold  enough 
ice  for  a  large  family. 

Ice-houses  should  be  located,  as  a  general  rule,  on  the 
north  side  of  a  hill,  if  built  under  ground,  so  that  the  ice  can 
be  approached  on  a  level  with  the  ground  on  which  it  is  built. 
On  many  farms  such  a  location  is  impracticable,  and  the  only 
alternative  is  to  build  one  on  the  surface,  which  is  now,  on 
the  whole,  considered  the  most  approved  way.  The  general 
construction  should  be  a  wooden  frame  building,  with  another 
outside  of  it,  with  a  space  intervening  of  from  fifteen  to 
thirty  inches,  which  should  be  filled  in  with  coal-cinders,  tan- 
bark,  or,  which  is  better  than  either,  pulverized  charcoal. 
It  would  be  better  if  the  inner  building  were  made  of  solid 
timbers  close  together,  and  about  three  inches  thick ;  the 
outer  one,  or  the  shell,  may  be  a  common  frame,  neatly 
weather-boarded,  and  kept  well  painted  with  white  lead,  so 
as  to  repel  the  heat  of  the  sun.  It  will  add  to  the  con- 


FARMERS'  HOUSES.  687 

venience  of  an  ice-house  if  the  bottom,  pr  at  least  a  part  of 
it,  is  arched,  so  as  to  form  a  place  for  a  larder  under  this 
arch,  or  the  drainings  of  the  ice  should  be  made  to  pass 
through  the  dairy  or  spring-house. 

The  following  extract,  from  Moore's  Rural  New  Yorker, 
shows  how  a  farmer  may  build  an  ice-house  cheaply.  This 
has  been  built  ten  years,  and  is  perfectly  sound  except  the 
inside  boarding,  which  requires  renewing  once  in  five  or  six 
years :  "  The  size  is  eight  by  ten  outside,  six  feet  high.  I 
took  two-inch  plank,  twelve  inches  wide,  for  sills  and  plates, 
halved  together  at  the  corners.  I  used  studs  on  the  inside, 
and  boardod  up  and  down  outside.  The  cracks  should  be 
covered  with  battens,  to  prevent  the  air  striking  the  ice. 
The  inside  should  be  boarded  the  other  way,  to  within  a  foot 
or  so  of  the  plates,  which  should  be  left  until  the  space  is 
filled.  The  rafters  should  be  five  or  six-inch  stuff,  boarded 
on  the  inside,  and  the  space  filled  with  either  sawdust  or 
refuse  tan-bark.  I  place  poles  or  scantling  in  the  bottom, 
and  cover  with  slabs,  which  will  afford  all  the  drainage  neces- 
sary. The  door  should  always  be  on  the  north  side.  The 
cracks  in  the  north  gable-end  should  be  left  open  for  the  pur- 
pose of  ventilation.  I  consider  sawdust  the  best  to  fill  the 
sides  with,  but  tan-bark,  turner's  shavings,  chaff,  or  straw 
will  do.  The  size  of  this  house  may  be  objected  to  by  some, 
but  mine  holds  enough  for  a  large  family,  and  also  a  dairy  of 
twenty  cows.  I  don't  believe  any  dairyman  who  has  had  ice 
to  use  one  year  would  be  without  it  for  ten  times  the  cost. 

"  One  thing  more  about  the  house  :  It  should  be  banked  up 
at  the  bottom,  for  any  circulation  of  air  through  the  ice  will 
melt  it  as  fast  as  water  poured  through  it." 

Many  farms  have  small  streams  of  water  running  through 
them.  In  such  cases  the  locality  for  an  ice-house  should  be 
selected  with  reference  to  the  convenience  of  damming  this 
stream  near  it,  before  Christmas,  in  such  a  way  that  a  lake  of 
a  hundred  feet  or  more  in  diameter,  and  about  two  feet  deep, 
may  be  formed,  and  properly  protected  from  cattle  and  all 
nuisances.  This  body  of  water  would  yield  enough  ice  for 
a  large  farm,  and  by  its  shallowness  would  be  more  certain 
to  yield  a  crop  of  ice,  because  a  less  degree  of  cold  would 
be  required  to  freeze  it  solidly  than  in  a  deeper  stream,  or 


688  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

one  which  was  running,  even  with  a  sluggish  current.  One 
freezing  over  would  yield  thirty  or  forty  one-horse  loads  of 
this  summer  luxury.  While  the  lavish  use  of  ice  and  ice- 
water  cannot  but  be  prejudicial  to  the  health  of  any  family, 
common  ice  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  remedial  means 
in  case  of  sickness  in  various  forms. 

To  a  person  burning  up  with  internal  fevers  ice  is  a 
comfort  beyond  expression.  Swallowing  ice  freely  in  small 
lumps  is  the  chief  treatment  in  inflammation  of  the  stomach. 
The  constant  application  of  ice  pounded  fine  and  enveloping 
the  head  with  it  by  means  of  a  cushion  or  other  contrivance, 
is  the  most  reliable  remedy  for  that  dangerous  malady,  in- 
flammation of  the  brain,  which  so  often  sends  its  victim  to  the 
grave  in  a  few  days,  or  to  that  living  death,  the  mad-house. 

In  all  inflammations,  whether  internal  or  external,  ice 
diminishes  rapidly  the  size  of  the  blood-vessels,  and  thus  re- 
lieves the  pain  they  give  when  thus  swollen  by  their  pressing 
against  the  nerves,  which  are  always  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  arteries  of  the  system. 

Diptheria,  and  some  of  the  worst  of  other  forms  of  sore 
throat,  have  been  arrested  in  a  very  short  time  by  pounding 
a  piece  of  ice  in  a  bag,  then  laying  the  head  back,  take  the 
lumps  of  ice  and  swallowing  them  continuously  until  relieved, 
allowing  them  to  be  detained  in  the  throat  as  long  as  possi- 
ble, there  to  melt. 

In  all  forms  of  diarrhoea  and  dysentery,  where  there  is 
great  thirst,  the  gratification  of  which  by  drinking  any  liquid 
increases  the  malady,  they  are  promptly  controlled,  and  in 
many  cases  perfectly  cured,  by  simply  swallowing  as  large 
lumps  of  ice  as  possible. 

Epilepsy  itself,  one  of  the  most  uncontrollable  of  human 
maladies,  is  said  to  be  treated  successfully  in  London  by  the 
application  of  ice  to  the  spinal  portion  of  the  system. 

A  piece  of  ice  laid  on  the  wrist  will  often  arrest  profuse 
and  dangerous  bleeding  of  the  nose. 

In  croup,  water  as  cold  as  ice  can  make  it,  if  applied  freely 
and  persistently  to  the  throat,  neck,  and  upper  part  of  the 
chest  with  a  sponge  or  cloth,  often  affords  an  almost  mirac- 
ulous relief,  especially  if  followed  by  drinking  copiously  of 
ice  water,  wiping  the  wetted  parts  perfectly  dry,  then  wrap- 


FARMERS'  BOUSES.  689 

ping  the  child,  closely  up  in  dry  flannels,  allowing  it  to  fall 
into  a  delightful  and  life-giving  slumber. 

These  statements  may  induce  the  farmer  to  be  at  pains,  if 
he  does  conclude  to  build  an  ice-house,  to  have  it  done  in  the 
most  thorough  manner,  and  after  the  most  approved  pattern. 

SHADE    TREES. 

It  looks  well  in  the  midst  of  summer  to  see  a  tidy  farm- 
house almost  hidden  from  view  by  trees  and  bushes  ;  but  the 
influence  they  have  in  keeping  a  dwelling  damp  in  summer, 
and  in  producing  a  raw  and  chilly  atmosphere  in  winter,  thus 
engendering  disease  the  year  round,  are  sufficient  reasons  for 
exercising  a  wise  discretion  in  this  direction.  Persons  who 
have  visited  England  have  often  admired  the  country  places 
of  the  gentry,  one  very  uniform  attendant  being  a  beautiful 
green  lawn  in  front  of  the  buildings,  not  a  single  bush  or 
tree,  unless  it  may  be  in  a  diagonal  direction  from  the  front 
corners  of  the  buildings,  forward  and  away.  It  would  sub- 
serve the  purposes  of  health,  especially  in  level,  or  low,  or 
damp  localities,  to  have  neither  tree  nor  bush  within  twenty 
or  thirty  feet  of  the  front  of  the  farm-house,  unless  it  be  a 
flowering  plant  here  and  there,  or  some  stately  and  ancient 
denizen  of  the  forest,  to  give  an  air  of  antiquity  and  substan- 
tialness  to  the  surroundings ;  but  even  these  should  not  be  so 
near  as  to  keep  the  roof  of  the  building  always  more  or  less 
damp,  nor  to  darken  the  best  and  most  frequented  rooms  of 
the  house ;  for  the  first,  the  most  indispensable  requisite 
in  building  or  remodelling  a  farm-house  should  be  to  arrange 
for  its  healthfulness. 

BARNS. 

These  should  be  erected  in  as  dry  a  locality  as  possible, 
where  the  sun  can  shine  upon  them  the  whole  day,  and  where 
the  ground  descends  in  every  direction.  Special  attention 
should  be  paid  to  the  roofing,  so  that  the  rain  may  be  turned 
off  rapidly,  and  that  the  snow  may  melt  very  soon,  without 
the  possibility  of  large  accumulations. 

THE    STABLE. 

should  be  arranged  to  be  above  ground,  to  be  well  ventilated, 
and  to  have  abundant  light ;  in  short,  to  be  cool  in  summer 


690  FARMERS'  HOUSES. 

and  warm  in  winter.  He  can  never  be  a  successful  farmer 
who  does  not  shelter  his  cattle  effectually  and  well,  in  all 
seasons,  from  the  inclemencies  of  the  weather.  It  is  not  only 
a  humanity,  but  a  great  pecuniary  saving  on  every  farm  where 
there  is  a  single  living  animal.  Some  build  stables  low  for 
warmth,  but  the  advantage  is  more  than  lost  by  the  vitiation 
of  the  atmosphere.  A  warm,  bad  air  is  worse  than  the  cooler 
and  still  atmosphere  of  a  stable.  The  ceiling  of  a  stable 
should  be  at  least  ten  feet  high,  with  an  aperture  for  the  es- 
cape of  foul  air;  the  walls  or  partitions  should  be  close,  and 
arranged  to  have  abundant  light  admitted  through  glass  win- 
dows. In  summer  the  sash  may  be  removed. 

The  American  Agriculturist  for  December,  1863,  gives  a 
description  of  a  stable  for  draught  and  farm  horses,  which  con- 
tains the  most  important  points  on  this  subject,  though,  per- 
haps, not  practicable  for  farms  generally. 

"  The  stable  should  not  be  less  than  eighteen  feet  wide,  and 
of  such  length  as  will  allow  six  feet  standing  for  each  horse. 
It  should  be  ten  feet  high.  The  horses  stand  in  a  single  row. 
and  the  harness  is  hung  on  pegs  in  the  wall  behind  them. 
This  width  admits  of  thorough  ventilation  to  the  stable  with- 
out subjecting  the  horses  to  draughts.  Each  standing  should 
be  parted  off  by  an  upright  post  reaching  from  the  ground  to 
the  ceiling  rafter,  placed  three  feet  from  the  wall  at  the  horse's 
head.  The  partitions  should  be  closely  boarded  up  three  feet 
above  the  manger  and  hay-crib,  to  prevent  the  horses  quarrel- 
ling about  the  food,  and  biting  each  other.  To  each  of  the 
posts  a  bale,  eight  feet  long  and  twenty  inches  wide,  should 
be  hung  by  a  strong  chain  to  divide  the  standings,  and  sus- 
pended by  another  strong  chain  at  the  hinder  end  from  the 
ceiling  rafter.  Each  chain  should  have  a  hook  and  eye  within 
reach,  that  may  be  readily  unfastened.  This  arrangement 
will  leave  a  space  of  six  feet  opposite  the  head  of  each  horse 
available  for  feeding  purposes.  The  manger  for  corn  and 
chaff  (cut  feed)  may  be  two  and  a  half  feet  long.  It  should 
be  two  feet  wide  at  the  top,  one  foot  two  inches  at  the  bot- 
tom. The  hay  and  straw,  which  should  be  cut  into  six-inch 
lengths,  will  require  a  larger  receptacle,  which  should  be  three 
feet  six  inches  long,  two  feet  wide  at  its  upper  part,  and  half 
that  width  below.  It  should  be  so  constructed  that  while  it 


FARMERS1  HOUSES.  691 

• 

is  even  with  the  manger  above,  it  should  reach  to  the  ground, 
two  feet  above  which  should  be  fixed  to  the  wall  a  bottom, 
sloping  to  one  foot  above  the  ground  in  front,  where  some 
upright  openings  should  be  cut  to  allow  the  escape  of  seeds 
and  dirt.  At  the  top  of  this  hay  and  straw-crib,  an  iron  rack, 
with  bars  six  inches  apart,  should  be  so  hung  as  to  open  up 
and  fall  back  against  the  wall  to  let  the  fodder  be  put  in,  and 
then  be  put  down  upon  it  for  the  horse  to  eat  through.  It 
should  be  so  much  smaller  than  the  opening  that  it  can  fall 
down  with  the  fodder  as  it  is  consumed,  by  which  means  not 
a  particle  is  wasted.  The  manger  may  be  constructed  of 
yellow  deal,  one  and  a  half  inches  thick  for  the  front,  back, 
and  ends  ;  the  bottom  of  slate,  three  quarters  of  an  inch  thick. 
The  top  of  the  front  and  ends  should  be  covered  with  half 
round  iron,  two  and  a  half  inches  wide,  screwed  on  to  pro- 
ject over  the  front,  a  quarter  of  an  inch  outside  and  three 
quarters  of  an  inch  inside  the  manger.  This  prevents  the 
food  being  tossed  out  and  the  manger  being  gnawed.  A  short 
post  must  be  put  up  as  near  the  centre  of  the  standing  as  pos- 
sible to  support  the  manger,  into  which  a  large  screw  ring 
must  be  put  to  let  the  chain  or  rope  of  the  headstall  pass 
freely  up  and  down  without  constant  friction.  The  manger 
may  be  three  and  a  half  feet  from  ground  to  top ;  the  hay- 
crib  of  course  the  same  height.  The  paving  of  the  standings 
to  three  and  a  half  feet  from  the  head  should  be  flat,  then 
with  a  fall  from  both  sides  to  the  centre,  where  an  angle  iron 
drain  of  four  inches  wide  from  end  to  end,  with  a  removable 
flat  iron  cover  fitted  to  the  inside  of  it,  should  be  placed 
straight  down  the  standing,  with  a  fall  into  another  larger 
cross  main  drain,  ten  feet  six  inches  from  the  head,  so  placed 
as  to  carry  away  the  urine  from  all  the  smaller  drains  into  a 
tank  outside  the  stable.  This  main  drain  so  placed  takes  the 
urine  from  the  mares,  and  has  a  loose  cover  also  fitted  to  it, 
easily  removed  for  sweeping  out  when  necessary,  perhaps 
once  a  week.  This  system  keeps  the  stable  healthy,  econ- 
omizes the  urine  and  the  straw  also,  the  latter  very  impor- 
tant where  it  can  be  sold,  or  consumed  as  food.  The  width 
of  eighteen  feet  for  the  stable  gives  room  for  narrow  corn- 
bins  three  feet  high,  so  that  each  carter  may  have  his  horse's 
corn  separate-" 


692  MIND  AND   CHARCOAL. 

• 
In  the  above,  paving  has  been  alluded  to  for  standings,  but 

a  hard,  dry,  dirt  floor  is  greatly  better  than  stone  or  plank. 
A  nice,  smooth,  hard,  and  dry  floor  may  be  secured  with 
small  stones  packed  like  a  macadamized  road,  the  interstices 
being  filled  up  with  good  cement,  or  with  the  dust  made  by 
breaking  up  limestone  rock.  This  will  make  a  floor  which 
water  cannot  penetrate  nor  horseshoe  disturb.  The  cheap- 
est and  best  bedding,  at  least  near  mills,  for  such  a  floor,  or 
for  any  other  if  kept  dry,  is  sawdust,  which  should  be  laid 
in  abundantly  when  dry,  in  the  fall  of  the  year. 

It  may  be  added  that  a  good  farmer  and  a  generous  man, 
having  arranged  his  house  for  the  comfort,  health,  and  happi- 
ness of  his  family,  and  the  elevation  of  the  tastes  of  his  neigh- 
borhood, will  not  rest  satisfied  as  long  as  the  noble  horse, 
the  useful  cow,  and  the  patient  ox  and  mule  are  without 
comfortable  quarters,  warm  in  winter,  cool  in  summer,  and 
all  the  year  round  abundantly  fed  and  kindly  treated,  extend- 
ing these  with  a  right  good  will  to  pigs  and  poultry  too. 


MIND   AND   CHARCOAL. 

THE  diamond,  the  most  valuable  thing  in  nature,  so  spar- 
kling, so  beautiful  and  bright,  whose  lustre  does  not  pale  a 
particle  in  the  lapse  of  ages,  is  but  another  condition  of  car- 
bon, or  charcoal,  which  you  cannot  touch  without  soiling  your 
fingers ;  beautifully  shadowing  to  us  that  greater  change  which 
shall  come  over  the  frail  tenement  of  man,  when  it  shall  be 
raised  a  spiritual  body,  fit  for  the  heavenly  mansions,  and 
destined  to  a  beatific  existence  when  time  shall  be  no  more. 
But  the  human  mind  cannot  act  without  the  agency  of  carbon, 
and  by  this  same  agency  do  the  trees  grow,  and  the  flowers 
bloom,  and  the  connection  between  these  is  called  "The  Cor- 
relation of  Mental  and  Physical  Force ; "  which  phrase  we 
were  afraid  to  put  at  the  head  of  this  article,  lest  the  reader 
should  be  frightened  by  its  apparent  abstruseness,  and  skip  it 
over ;  for  all  like  the  kind  of  reading  best  which  requires  the 
least  thinking;  the  newspapers,  civil,  religious,  and  mongrel, 
have  found  this  out,  and  load  their  columns  with  all  sorts  of 


MIND  AND   CHARCOAL.  693 

impossible  fabrications,  as  weak  as  water,  and  as  wishy-washy 
as  cold  soup ;  but  publishers  know  that  "  there  is  money  in 
it,"  the  thoughtless  public  are  pleased,  and  down  we  are  go- 
ing, at  railroad  speed,  ad  infernum. 

Carbon  represents  heat;  vegetation  grows  by  absorbing 
carbon  ;  and  the  hotter  the  climate  the  faster  does  vegetation 
grow.  At  the  poles  there  is  no  carbon,  and  there  is  no  vege- 
tation. When  a  tree  is  growing,  it  absorbs  as  much  carbon 
as  it  will  give  out,  when  it  is  cut  down  and  burned ;  if  a 
pound  of  carbon,  or  wood,  is  burned  and  applied  to  water, 
so  as  to  make  steam,  that  steam,  if  economized,  will  raise  a 
man  to  the  top  of  Mount  Washington.  But  if  a  man  wants  to 
go  to  the  top  of  Mount  Washington,  he  can  raise  himself  up 
there  by  the  force  of  his  will,  acting  on  his  feet ;  but  in  order 
to  do  this,  the  brain  must  act  upon  the  muscles  of  the  body, 
and  to  do  that  carbon  must  be  supplied  to  it ;  this  carbon  is 
obtained  from  the  food  we  eat ;  and  unless  we  eat  food  which 
contains  carbon,  we  will  soon  die,  as  the  body  gets  cold ;  in 
a  sense,  freezes.  Thus  we  see  that  carbon,  acting  on  water, 
will  raise  a  man  sky-high  ;  this  is  called  physical  force  ^car- 
bon feeding  the  brain  enables  a  man  to  will  himself  to  the 
same  altitude,  and  away  he  goes,  as  fast  as  his  legs  will  carry 
him  ;  this  is  the  result  of  mental  force ;  and  now  the  reader 
sees  the  connection  between  physical  and  mental  force,  that 
they  accomplish  the  same  result,  and  by  the  use  of  the  same 
agency,  heat,  obtained  from  carbon  or  charcoal.  That  is  to 
say,  the  vital  force  of  the  body  and  of  the  vegetable  is  gen- 
erated by  carbon.  It  would  be  useless  to  bother  the  reader 
with  this  long  rigmarole,  unless  we  could  derive  from  it  some 
practical  lesson,  by  which  we  can  be  made  better  or  happier. 
The  largest  specimens  of  vegetation  and  animals  grew  in  the 
earlier  ages,  in  parts  where  the  atmosphere  was  a  furnace; 
and  as  the  crust  of  the  earth  cools,  both  grow  more  slowly, 
and  the  time  for  dying  comes  before  they  reach  as  great  a 
stature  as  of  old ;  and  so  it  must  be  with  man,  the  more  car- 
bon he  absorbs,  the  more  food  he  can  eat  and  appropriate 
healthfully  to  the  bodily  uses,  the  larger  or  stronger  will  he 
be,  according  to  whether  the  greater  amount  of  carbon  is  ab- 
sorbed by  the  brain  or  muscles ;  it  is  the  stomach  which  is  to 
prepare  the  food  for  the  elimination  of  the  carbon  contained 


694  MIND  AND   CHARCOAL. 

in  it ;  this  processes  called  digestion ;  hence,  the  more  per- 
fect, the  more  vigorous,  the  more  healthful  a  man's  digestion 
is,  the  more  vigorous  will  he  be  in  mind  or  body,  if  not  both  ; 
so  whatever  we  do  to \weaken,  to  disease  the  stomach,  we  do 
that  much  towards  impairing  mind  and  body ;  towards  de- 
praving the  race ;  degrading  H  towards  the  mere  animal  and 
the  idiot.  If  we  eat  jus&  enouglj,  both  mind  and  body  are 
invigorated  ;  if  we  eat  too  little,  bcHJi  become  weak  and  faint ; 
the  body  trembles,  the  mind  is  inefficient ;  if  we  eat  too 
much,  the  stomach  cannot  eliminate  $fae  material  which  is  to 
give  out  a  pure  carbon,  and  it  then  gives  out  an  impure  arti- 
cle, and  mind  and  body  are  oppressed ;  the  former  loses  its 
activity,  the  latter  its  vigor.  Farming,  or  any  other  active 
out-door  life,  tends  to  perfect  digestion ;  city  life,  with  its 
inactions  and  its  intemperances,  impairs  the  digestion ;  then 
follows  the  startling  truth,  and  known  to  be  truth  the  world 
over,  that  families  in  cities,  whole  family  names,  die  out  in 
two  or  three  generations.  It  has  been  stated  that  it  rarely 
happens  that  a  grandchild  reaches  maturity  in  Paris  ;  scarcely 
a  dozen  of  the  same  prominent  family  names  are  found  in  the 
New  York  City  Directories  of  1868  which  were  in  the  Direc- 
tory of  1802,  just  two  generations  ago ;  and  but  for  the  re- 
plenishment of  lads  from  the  country,  the  progeny  of  hard, 
out-door  workers,  of  vigorous  stomachs,  eliminating  carbon 
largely,  so  as  to  give  power  to  produce  children  of  robust 
health,  New  York  would  be  almost  depopulated  in  a  compar- 
atively short  time.  These  are  serious  truths  ;  and  to  antago- 
nize such  results,  let  every  child  born  in  New  York,  and 
whose  father  and  grandfather  were  born  in  New  York,  be 
sent  to  the  country  during  the  first  month  of  its  life,  to  be 
brought  up  to  out-door  labor,  so  as  to  renew  the  constitution. 
The  intelligent  reader  will  feel  a  very  deep  interest  in  these 
statements,  and  will  regard  them  as  general  truths,  to  be 
modified  by  antagonizing  circumstances,  but  not  the  less  true 
and  practical  for  all  that.  Let  us  recapitulate.  As  much 
heat  or  carbon  is  absorbed  by  a  tree  during  its  growth  as  it 
will  give  out  when  it  is  burned  ;  so  as  much  bodily  and  ner- 
vous energy  will  be  given  out  by  a  man,  as  the  carbon  con- 
tained in  the  food  which  he  eats  will  supply. 

But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  more  a  man  eats  the  more 


MIND  AND   CHARCOAL.  695 

carbon  will  he  absorb,  and  consequently  the  larger,  stronger, 
and  more  intellectual  will  he  become ;  these  depend  on  the 
healthful  vigor  of  his  digestion,  because  it  is  this  which  pre- 
pares the  food  for  the  separation  of  the  carbon  in  it,  previous 
to  its  absorption  into  the  system ;  and  as  an  active  out-door 
life  is  the  best  means  known  for  securing  a  perfectly  health- 
ful digestion,  the  inference  is  fair,  logical,  and  legitimate, 
and  observation  will  prove  its  truthfulness,  that  out-door  ac- 
tivities, for  the  first  thirty  years  of  life,  at  least,  are  very  cer- 
tain to  be  followed  by  high  health,  bodily  power,  intellectual 
ability,  and  long  life ;  this  intellectual  activity  being  greater 
or  less,  according  to  the  greater  or  less  size  of  the  brain 
proper,  which  is  that  portion  which  lies  in  the  front  and  upper 
region  of  the  head. 

The  mind  acts  on  the  body  through  the  brain,  making  the 
brain  in  the  nature  of  a  machine,  whose  working  involves 
waste,  and  the  necessity  of  repair  or  renewal,  as  oil  to  the 
wheels  of  vehicles  of  locomotion ;  this  renewal  is  made  from 
the  food  we  eat ;  the  faster  a  physical  machine  runs,  the  faster 
will  it  wear  out,  and  there  is  no  help  for  it ;  but  the  human 
machine  had  Divinity  for  its  architect,  and  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  faster  or  more  vigorously  it  works,  the  more  intense 
the  thoughts  and  sensations,  the  sooner  will  it  decay ;  but  it 
only  follows  that  the  harder  a  man  works,  or  thinks,  or  the 
more  intense  are  his  sensations,  the  more  nourishment  must 
be  given  to  the  muscles  which  work,  and  to  the  brain,  through 
which  comes  our  sensations,  that  is,  the  more  carbon  must  be 
supplied  to  the  system ;  and,  as  was  before  noticed,  that  the 
greater  the  amount  of  carbon  supplied,  the  larger  was  the 
tree,  the  greater  the  animal,  the  more  vigorous  the  action  of 
the  brain  the  mental  work,  it  therefore  follows  that  the  human 
machine  increases  its  physical  and  mental  capabilities  by  the 
very  increase  of  its  activities ;  that  the  more  a  man  works, 
the  more  and  better  he  can  work ;  the  more  he  thinks,  the 
more  and  better  he  can  think ;  hence,  the  busiest  men  live 
the  longest,  whether  it  be  physical  or  mental  industry  ;  thus, 
Newton,  and  others  of  the  greatest  intellects  in  physics,  in 
theology,  and  in  ethics,  have  lived  to  a  good  old  age. 

But  it  is  a  beautiful  thought,  and  suggestive,  too,  that  man 
expends  his  carbon  in  two  directions ;  through  the  muscles, 


696  DIETING. 

enabling  him  to  work  a  great  deal ;  and  through  the  brain, 
enabling  him  to  think  a  great  deal ;  if  expended  equally  in 
these  two  directions,  a  man  becomes  a  good  worker  and  a 
good  thinker ;  but  if  he  would  become  the  best  worker,  the 
excess  of  carbon  must  be  expended  through  the  muscles ;  if, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  desires  to  excel  in  the  world  of  thought, 
he  must  expend  the  greater  share  of  his  carbon  through  the 
brain. 

But  another  beautiful  thought  must  not  be  omitted.  A 
good  digestion  takes  the  carbon  out  of  the  food  eaten  and 
throws  it  into  the  circulation,  the  blood ;  but  throwing  coal 
into  a  furnace  will  not  warm  the  house,  the  fire  must  be  kin- 
dled ;  the  coal  must  burn,  and  its  burning  gives  out  heat, 
this  is  called  combustion ;  the  body  is  the  furnace,  the  carbon 
put  into  it  by  eating,  is  its  coal  or  fuel,  but  it  must  be  kin- 
dled, must  be  set  on  fire,  by  having  oxygen  introduced ;  we 
know  that  a  tire  will  not  burn  unless  the  air  can  get  to  it 
and  supply  it  with  its  oxygen ;  so,  also,  will  not  the  carbon 
in  the  blood  kindle  into  warmth  and  heat,  unless  a  plenty  of 
good  air  is  introduced  into  it,  which  is  done  by  breathing  it 
into  the  lungs,  where  all  the  blood  goes,  and  so,  being 
brought  into  contact  there,  the  oxygen  of  the  air  and  the 
carbon  of  the  blood  join,  and  combustion  is  the  result,  giv 
ing  out  heat,  fire,  warmth;  and  as  the  out-door  air  is  the 
purest,  freshest,  and  best,  the  more  we  are  out  of  doors,  the 
more  oxygen  we  get,  the  more  perfectly  the  carbon  is  burned, 
and  the  greater  the  amount  of  healthful  heat  is  there  in  the 
system. 


DIETING. 

SOME  persons  eat  themselves  to  death,  others  are  dieted  to 
death.  When  a  man  is  sick  he  is  weak,  and  concludes  that, 
as  when  he  was  well  he  ate  heartily  and  was  strong,  if  he  now 
eats  heartily,  he  will  become  strong  again  ;  well-meaning  but 
ignorant  friends  are  of  the  same  opinion,  and  their  solicita- 
tions to  eat  become  one  of  the  greatest  annoyances  of  a  sensi- 
ble invalid.  Nature  purposely  takes  away  the  appetite,  under 
such  circumstances,  and  makes  the  very  sight  of  food  iiau- 


DIETING.  697 

seating.  A  sick  man  is  feeble ;  this  feebleness  extends  to 
every  muscle  of  the  body,  and  the  stomach,  being  made  up 
of  a  number  of  muscles,  has  its  share  of  debility.  It  requires 
several  hours  of  labor  for  the  stomach  to  "  work  up  "  an  ordi- 
nary meal ;  and  to  give  it  that  amount  of  work  to  do  when  it 
is  already  in  an  exhausted  condition,  is  like  giving  a  man, 
worn  out  by  a  hard  day's  work,  a  task  which  shall  keep  him 
laboring  half  the  night.  Mothers  are  often  much  afraid  that 
their  daughters  will  hurt  themselves  by  a  little  work,  if  they 
complain  of  not  feeling  very  well ;  and  yet  if  such  daughters 
were  to  sit  down  to  dinner,  and  shovel  in  enough  provender 
for  an  elephant  or  a  ploughman,  it  would  be  considered  a  good 
omen  and  the  harbinger  of  convalescence.  A  reverse  pro- 
cedure would  restore  multitudes  of  ailing  persons  to  perma- 
nent good  health  ;  namely,  to  eat  very  little  for  a  few  days  ; 
eat  nothing  but  coarse  bread  and  ripe  fruits,  and  work  about 
the  house  industriously :  or,  what  is  better,  exercise  in  the 
open  air  for  the  greater  part  of  each  day  on  horseback,  in  the 
garden,  or  walking  through  the  woodlands  or  over  the  hills, 
for  hours  at  a  time.  Objectless  walks  and  lazy  lolling  in  car- 
riages, are  very  little  better  than  nothing.  The  effect  of  in- 
terested, absorbing  exercise,  is  to  work  out  of  the  system  the 
diseased  and  surplus  matter  which  poisons  it ;  this  relieves 
the  stomach  of  the  burdens  imposed  upon  it,  and  allows  it 
time  to  gain  strength,  so  as  more  perfectly  to  convert  the 
food  eaten  into  well-made,  pure,  and  life-giving  blood.  A 
weakly  but  faithful  servant,  in  the  effort  to  get  through  with 
a  specified  amount  of  work,  may  perform  it  all,  but  none  of 
it  is  thoroughly  done ;  whereas,  if  a  moderate  task  had  been 
assigned,  all  of  it  would  have  been  well  done  ;  so  a  weak 
stomach,  indicated  by  a  poor  appetite,  may  be  able  to  con- 
vert a  small  amount  of  food  into  pure,  invigorating  blood  ; 
but  if  too  much  is  eaten,  the  attempt  M  to  get  through  it  all " 
is  made,  blood  is  manufactured,  but  it  is  an  imperfect  blood, 
it  is  vitiated,  and  mixing  with  that  already  in  the  system,  at 
every  beat  of  the  heart,  the  whole  mass  is  corrupted,  and 
"I  am  ailing  all  over,"  is  the  expressive  description.  In 
another  set  of  cases  there  is  a  morbid  appetite  ;  the  unhappy 
dyspeptic  is  always  hungry,  and  finding  that  he  feels  best 
while  eating,  and  for  a  brief  space  afterwards,  he  is  always 


698  DIPHTHERIAL  DISEASE. 

eating,  and  always  dying.  To  hear  him  talk,  you  would 
imagine  he  could  not  possibly  live  long,  and  yet  he  does  live, 
and  grows  old  in  his  miseries.  Such  may  reasonably  expect 
a  cure.  1st.  By  eating  very  moderately  at  three  specified 
times  each  day,  and  not  an  atom  at  any  other;  then,  in  less 
than  a  fortnight,  sometimes,  these  distressing  cravings  will 
cease.  2d.  Spend  a  large  portion  of  daylight  in  agreeable 
out-door  activities. 


DIPHTHERIAL  DISEASE. 

DIPHTHERIA  is  now  a  familiar  household  word  ;  until  within 
a  very  few  years,  indeed,  it  had  never  been  heard  of  by  one  in 
a  million  of  the  masses.  Its  fearfully  sudden  and  fatal  charac- 
ter, especially  among  children,  makes  it  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance that  those,  at  least,  who  have  families  should  know 
something  of  its  nature,  its  causes,  its  symptoms,  and  its  cure. 
By  examining  a  great  many  who  have  died  of  it,  some  general 
facts  have  been  ascertained,  which  are  of  considerable  practi- 
cal interest.  Neither  chemistry  nor  the  microscope  have  yet 
been  able  to  determine  that  any  particular  structure  of  the  body 
is  uniformly  invaded ;  nor  have  any  characteristic  lesions  or 
destruction  of  parts  been  found.  One  thing,  however,  is 
certain  :  the  whole  mass  of  blood  is  corrupted,  is  diseased,  is 
destitute  of  those  elements  which  are  necessary  to  health ;  it 
is  of  a  dark,  grumous,  ugly  appearance,  filling  up  every  vein 
and  artery,  stagnating  everywhere,  clogging  up  the  whole  ma- 
chinery of  life,  oppressing  the  brain,  and  arresting  the  flow  of 
nervous  energy  in  every  part  of  the  system.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  it  crushes  out  the  life,  in  a  very  few  hours,  of  feeble 
childhood,  and  of  older  persons  who  have  but  little  constitu- 
tional force.  The  three  most  universally  present  symptoms 
of  diphtheria  in  the  child  arc,  1st,  general  prostration  of  the 
whole  system  ;  2d,  an  instinctive  carrying  of  the  hand  to  the 
throat;  3d,  an  offensive  breath. 

As  chemistry  has  been  unable  to  detect  any  poisonous  in- 
gredient in  the  atmosphere  where  diphtheria  prevails,  we  are 
left  to  the  inference  that  the  air  of  such  a  locality  is  simply 
deprived  of  one  of  its  essential  health-ingredients ;  for  let  it  be 


DIPHTHERIAL  DISEASE.  699 

remembered,  that  if  a  little  more  oxygen  were  added  to  the 
atmosphere  we  breathe,  the  very  first  match  that  was  struck 
would  envelop  the  world  in  fire  in  an  instant  of  time,  while  if 
there  was  a  little  more  nitrogen  added  to  it,  all  that  breathes 
would  suffocate  and  die  within  the  hour,  so  easy  is  it  for  Om- 
nipotence to  wrap  the  solid  globe  in  flames,  or  sweep  from 
existence  the  entire  race  of  animals  and  man. 

Children  are  almost  exclusively  attacked  with  diphtheria, 
because  it  is  a  disease  of  debility  —  a  disease  which  depresses 
every  power  of  life ;  hence,  the  weaker  the  subject  is,  the 
more  liable  to  an  attack.  An  adult  has  only  to  maintain  him- 
self, the  child  has  to  do  that  and  to  grow  also ;  hence  it  has  a 
double  call  for  a  constant  supply  of  strength  ;  and  a  very  little 
deficit  in  that  quality  of  the  air  which  gives  vitality  to  the 
blood,  is  sufficient  to  make  it  a  fit  subject  for  a  diphtheritic 
attack.  The  few  grown  persons  who  have  diphtheria  have 
invariably  some  scrofulous  or  other  weakening  element.  Nei- 
ther a  man  nor  a  child,  in  really  vigorous  health,  is  ever 
attacked  with  it ;  they  only  suffer  who  are  at  the  time  defi- 
cient in  stamina  —  have  not  the  proper  resisting  power  against 
the  inroads  of  disease.  There  is  no  evidence  whatever  that 
diphtheria  is  w  catching."  The  matter  and  breath  of  it  have 
been  introduced  into  the  eyes,  lips,  mouth,  arm,  &c.,  of  phy- 
sicians who  have  generously  hazarded  these  experiments  upon 
themselves,  without  the  slightest  ill  effects  whatever.  When 
several  members  of  a  family  are  attacked,  it  is  not  because  it 
is  derived  one  from  another,  but  because  of  similarity  of  con- 
stitution, habits  of  life,  eating,  drinking,  air,  and  other  sur- 
roundings. It  has  not  as  yet  been  established  that  a  stranger, 
going  into  a  family  where  there  is  diphtheria,  takes  the  disease. 

The  treatment  is,  a  well-ventilated  room,  sustaining  nour- 
ishment, and  strengthening  remedies.  Diphtheria  is  not 
inoculable ;  it  prevails  in  every  climate,  in  all  seasons,  and  is 
equally  at  home  in  the  princely  mansions  which  line  the  spa- 
cious and  well-cleaned  street,  and  in  the  houses  of  stenchy 
courts  and  contracted  alleys.  It  has  no  fixed  course,  may  re- 
cur any  number  of  times,  but  only  fastens  on  the  scrofulous, 
or  those  whose  constitutions  are  impaired,  or  who  have  poor 
blood  ;  the  immediate  cause  of  attack  being  the  breathing  of 
a  faulty  or  defective  atmosphere. 


700  HEALTH  FOE   CHILDREN. 


HEALTH   FOR   CHILDREN. 

THREE  times  as  many  children  die  in  cities  as  in  the  country, 
and  half  the  children  born  do  not  reach  ten  years.  Such  a  re- 
sult could  never  have  been  intended  by  the  wise  and  kind 
Maker  of  us  all.  A  different  result  must  be  brought  about, 
by  the  exercise  of  the  reason  which  is  implanted  in  all  parents, 
and  which,  if  properly  cultivated  and  practised  in  the  lights 
of  our  time,  would  soon  work  a  wonderful  change  in  infantile 
mortality. 

1.  Children  should  sleep  in  separate  beds,  on  mattresses  of 
straw  or  shucks  of  corn. 

2.  Require  them  to  go  to  bed  at  a  regular  early  hour,  and 
let  them  have  the  fullest  amount  of  sleep  they  can  take,  allow- 
ing them  in  no  case  to  be  waked  up. 

3.  Except  a  rug  beside  the  bed,  there  should  be  no  carpet 
on  the  floor  of  their  chamber,  no  bed  or  window  curtains,  no 
clothing  of  any  description  hanging  about,  no  furniture  beyond 
a  dressing-table  and  a  few  chairs,  no  standing  fluids  except  a 
glass  of  water,  and  nothing  at  all  in  the  way  of  food,  or  plants, 
or  flowers.    In  short,  a  chamber  should  be  the  cleanest,  driest, 
coolest,  lightest,  and  most  barren  room  in  the  house,  in  order 
to  secure  the  utmost  purity  of  air  possible. 

4.  Make  it  your  study  to  keep  your  children  out  of  doors 
every  hour  possible,  from  breakfast-time  until  sundown,  for 
every  five  minutes  so  spent  in  joyous  play  increases  the  prob- 
abilities of  a  healthful  old  age. 

5.  Let  them   eat   at   regular  hours,  and  nothing  between 
meals  ;  eating  thus,  never  stint  them ;  let  them   partake  of 
plain,  substantial  food,  until   fully  satisfied.      Multitudes  of 
children  are  starved  into  dyspepsia.     The  last  meal  of  the  day 
should  be  at  least  two  hours  before  retiring. 

6.  Dress  children  warmly  —  woollen  flannel  next  their  per- 
sons during  the  whole  year.     By  every  consideration  protect 
the  extremities  well.    It  is  an  ignorant  barbarism  which  allows 
a  child  to  have  bare  arms,  and  legs,  and  feet,  even  in  summer. 
The  circulation  should  be  invited  to  the  extremities :  warmth 
does   that ;  cold  repels   it.     It  is  at  the  hands  and  feet  we 
begin  to  die.     Those  who  have  cold  hands  and  feet  are  never 


THE  WAY  TO  BE  SAFE.  701 

well.  Plenty  of  warmth,  plenty  of  substantial  food  and  ripe 
fruits,  plenty  of  sleep,  and  plenty  of  joyous  out-door  exercise, 
would  save  millions  of  children  annually. 


THE  WAY  TO  BE  SAFE. 

To  be  safe,  be  in  proper  places  at  proper  times,  and  mind 
your  own  business.  With  such  restrictions,  we  believe  human 
life  is  as  safe  in  New  York  as  in  any  other  city  on  the  globe. 
Nine  times  out  of  ten,  the  reports  of  persons  who  have  fared 
badly,  or  who  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Philistines, 
indicate  one  of  two  things  —  an  out-of-the-way  place,  or  an 
unseasonable  hour.  A  young  man  attends  a  private  party, 
leaves  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  is  heard  of  no  more. 
Another  visits  the  city,  and,  with  his  pockets  full  of  money, 
promenades  the  streets  alone  an  hour  or  two  after  dark.  It 
is  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  that  a  man  was  "knocked 
down,  and  robbed  of  several  thousand  dollars,"  with  no  trace  of 
the  robbers, —  unless  you  get  him  to  tell  where  he  was  and 
what  he  was  doing  between  the  hotors  of  decent  bedtime 
and  those  of  early  morning.  The  fact  is,  a  good  many  of  the 
robberies  fathered  on  large  cities  never  took  place.  The  as- 
signation and  the  gaming-table  are  the  maelstroms  of  half  the 
"  lost  pocket-books  "  of  the  city  morning  newspapers.  In  case 
of  a  "  respectable  "  citizen  being  knocked  down  and  settled  at 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  police  daily  report  the  transac- 
tion as  having  occurred  w  last  evening ;  "  which,  on  more 
minute  investigation,  will  be  found  to  have  been  not  long 
before  day. 

From  long  observation  of  city  life,  we  instinctively  set  a 
man  down  as  a  loafer,  or  rowdy,  or  a  loose  character,  the  mo- 
ment we  see  his  name  associated  with  a  M  loss,"  or  a  "  knock- 
down ;  "  and  we  maintain  the  position  until  we  have  conclusive 
proof  to  the  contrary.  We  never  hear  of  such  men  losing 
their  pocket-books,  or  of  being  clubbed  or  garroted,  as  William 
B.  Astor,  Peter  Cooper,  and  others  of  equal  standing.  The 
fact  is,  respectable  men  —  men  of  influence  and  position  —  are 
domestic  men  ;  they  spend  their  evenings  at  home  amid  their 
families,  or  in  attention  to  the  necessary  duties  of  good  citi- 


702  FOOD   THE  BEST  PHYSIC. 

zenship.  It  is  the  man  himself,  and  not  the  city,  that  is  the 
real  father  of  the  assaults  and  losses  reported  to  have  occurred 
from  time  to  time.  Not  seldom  are  they  men  who  have  been 
intrusted  with  funds  to  pay  out  for  other  people ;  not  always 
so,  certainly,  but  this  we  do  know,  that  if  a  man  is  courteous, 
minds  his  own  business,  and  keeps  good  hours,  he  may  walk 
the  streets  of  every  city  in  Christendom,  and  never  meet  a 
loss  or  receive  a  blow. 


FOOD  THE  BEST  PHYSIC. 

AN  inseparable  attendance  on  good  health,  is  the  regular 
daily  action  of  the  bowels :  more  than  this,  speedily  induces 
debility  ;  less,  causes  inaction,  dulness,  headaches,  fevers,  and 
death. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  one  living  whose  bowels  are  not  made 
free  or  costive  by  particular  articles  of  food ;  the  same  article 
affects  different  persons  variously.  Each  man  must  therefore 
observe  for  himself  what  articles  constipate,  and  what  loosen, 
and  act  accordingly ;  a  world  of  suffering  and  multitudes  of 
lives  would  be  saved  every  year  by  a  proper  attention  to  this 
simple  suggestion,  but  not  one  man  or  woman  in  a  thousand 
will  give  it  that  attention ;  hence,  the  great  mass  of  humanity 
perishes  before  its  prime. 

There  are  some  articles  of  food  which  have  various  effects 
according  to  the  parts  used.  The  May  Apple,  or  "  Mandrake," 
is  a  nutritious  fruit;  its  root  is  cathartic,  its  leaves  a  poison. 
The  common  house  grape  is  a  luscious  product :  the  pulp  is  a 
delicious  food,  and  in  health  should  be  the  only  part  swal- 
lowed ;  the  seeds  loosen  the  bowels,  while  the  skin  constipates 
them.  Two  or  three  pounds  of  freshly-picked,  ripe  grapes 
may  be  eaten  daily  by  a  person  in  good  health.  The  best  time 
for  eating  them  is  immediately  after  breakfast  and  dinner. 

The  only  safe,  as  well  as  the  most  rational  practice  of  phys- 
ic, is  to  make  our  food  subserve  medical  uses.  Knowing  this, 
a  doctor  no  more  takes  his  own  pills  than  an  attorney  goes  to 
law. 


STIMULANTS.  703 


STIMULANTS. 

STIMULANTS,  whether  of  wine,  or  ale,  or  opium,  or  alcohol, 
are  the  greatest  enemies  of  our  kind.  It  is  a  wide  mistake 
that  the  lower  classes  mainly  fall  into  habits  of  intoxication ; 
the  very  brightest  minds  of  the  past  age  and  of  our  own  time 
have  been  prematurely  wiped  out  by  the  stealthy  fiend,  Alco- 
hol. Of  the  stars  of  a  preceding  century,  which  have  gone 
out  in  the  night  of  drink,  to  shine  no  more,  we  might  name 
Addison,  and  Steele,  and  Moreland,  and  Sheridan,  and  Charles 
Lamb,  and  Theodore  Hook,  with  myriads  of  others.  And  of 
our  own  time,  what  a  long  array,.which  delicacy  to  the  living 
forbids  us  to  marshal  by  name,  of  all  professions  and  every 
calling  !  And  in  addition,  not  a  few  of  the  daughters  of  our 
land  fall,  unsuspected,  into  the  arms  of  the  remorseless  de- 
stroyer. 

We  are  not  opposed  to  the  moderate,  the  rational  use  of  tea 
or  coffee,  for  these  and  other  beverages  may  be  advantageous- 
ly employed.  Against  the  immoderate  use  of  so-called  "  stim- 
ulants," whether  in  the  milder  forms  of  beers,  wines,  and  cor- 
dials, or  of  those  more  decidedly  alcoholic,  there  are  two  infal- 
lible safeguards,  —  one  for  a  sage,  one  for  a  simpleton.  For 
the  latter,  for  the  overwhelming  majority,  there  is  only,  one 
ground  of  safety,  and  it  may  be  thus  plainly  stated  :  — 

If  you  never  touch  a  drop  of  any  preparation  containing 
alcohol,  you  will  most  assuredly  never  die  in  the  gutter ;  if 
you  ever  do  touch  a  drop,  you  may. 

There  is  no  middle  ground  which  any  man  or  woman  can 
safely  tread,  —  only  that  of  total  and  most  uncompromising  ab- 
stinence. 

To  the  very  few  who  are  wisely  firm,  who  have  that  strength 
of  character  which  is  the  parent  of  the  most  perfect  self-con- 
trol, we  may  give  a  safe  advice.  Use  a  specified  amount  at 
specified  times,  and  never,  under  any  circumstances,  without 
medical  advice,  or  under  great  urgency,  increase  that  amount 
by  a  single  drop,  in  quantity  or  in  frequency.  And  after  all, 
to  be  perfectly  safe,  "  Touch  not  —  taste  not  —  handle  not" 


704  POISONOUS  SOUPS. 


POISONOUS  SOUPS. 

"  EXTRACT  cf  meat."  prepared  by  Professor  Liebig's  method, 
is  pronounced  poisonous  by  Dr.  Kemmerich,  and  many  jour- 
nals have  taken  up  the  cry  of  mad  dog,  and  advise  the  public 
to  use  no  more  of  this  preparation  for  soups,  to  be  used  by 
invalids  and  others,  on  the  ground  that  it  abounds  in  potash 
salts.  The  effect  of  large  doses,  though  small  doses  may  be 
useful  as  a  tonic,  is  to  destroy  life  by  paralysis  of  the  heart, 
as  shown  by  an  experiment  on  a  dog.  The  utter  absurdity  of 
such  a  statement  ought  to  have  prevented  its  being  copied 
into  the  journals  of  the  country,  at  least  until  some  of  our 
standard  medical  journals  had  pronounced  upon  the  subject. 

There  is  scarcely  an  article  of  food  or  a  condiment  which 
some  ignoramus  has  not  pronounced  prejudicial  to  life,  if  used, 
although  men  have  been  using  them  since  the  world  began. 
Whole  chapters  have  been  written  in  right  down  earnest,  that 
common  salt,  as  used  in  our  food  by  the  masses,  is  slowly  de- 
stroying the  constitutions  of  men.  Within  a  few  months  the 
papers  have  been  teeming  with  objurgations  against  the  use 
of  pork  in  any  form,  because  its  tendency  was  to  fill  the 
human  body  with  worms,  which  multiplied  at  the  rate  of  a  mil- 
lion a  minute,  or  thereabouts ;  and  one  would  have  thought 
that  if  pork  was  not  banished  from  our  tables  on  the  spot,  all 
the  people  would  have  been  killed  by  wormy  convulsions 
before  Christmas.  Persons  write  to  us  to  know  if  they  had 
not  better  throw  all  their  snow-white  hogs'  lard  into  the 
streets  or  sink-holes. 

Then  came  the  cry  that  our  domestic  divinities,  in  the  use 
of  the  hair  of  others  for  the  adornment  of  their  heads,  were 
becoming  infected  with  a  terrible  parasite  which  adhered  to 
M  false  "  hair  ;  and  a  long,  unpronounceable  German  name  was 
given  as  authority  sufficient  to  banish  the  use  of  false  hair 
from  every  woman's  head  in  the  nation :  and  yet  pork,  and 
hog's  lard,  and  table  salt,  and  false  hair  are  used  as  much  as 
before,  and  still  the  human  race  has  not  perished  from  the 
face  of  the  earth  by  using  salt,  nor  gone  into  convulsions  by 
eating  "  ham  and  eggs,"  nor  become  wormy  be  wearing  water- 
falls. 


MONEY  AND  MIND.  705 

•  Now  tins  new  terror  is  to  become  a  nine  days'  wonder,  that 
a  simple  preparation  of  beefsteak  is  fatally  poisonous,  because 
it  has  the  elements  of  potash,  and  pure  potash  will  kill  a  dog. 
Roast  beef  will  kill  a  man  if  too  much  of  it  has  been  eaten  ;  we 
have  read,  within  twenty-four  hours,  that  a  man  just  married 
had  killed  himself  by  drinking  too  much  cold  water.  Many  an 
unfortunate  has  died  of  an  overdose  of  love:  of  too  much  joy. 
That  Liebig's  extract  of  beef  may  have  poisoned  some  per- 
sons, is  not  unlikely;  but  it  was  because  it  was  improperly 
prepared  or  put  up  improperly,  so  as  to  corrode  the  vessels 
which  contained  it.  If  properly  prepared  extract  of  beef  is 
put  up  in  incorrosive  vessels,  say  of  wood  or  glass,  it  is  utter- 
ly impossible  for  it  to  possess  one  atom  of  a  poisonous  quality 
other  than  glass-canned  fruit,  or  tomatoes,  or  vegetables  con- 
tain. 


MONEY  AND   MIND. 

OP  five  hundred  and  fifty-one  lunatics  in  Great  Britain, 
there  are  five  hundred  and  five  whose  aggregate  annual  in- 
come is  near  twelve  hundred  thousand  dollars,  or  about 
twenty-three  hundred  dollars  each. 

In  connection  with  this  fact  we  may  state,  that  of  a  given 
number  of  lunatics  in  Massachusetts,  three  fourths  were  of 
parents,  one  or  both  of  whom  drank  liquor  largely.  Extremes 
meet.  The  rich,  who  revel  in  luxury  and  ease,  and  the  poor, 
who  riot  in  rum,  furnish  the  children  for  the  mad-house ;  thus 
giving  us  the  strongest  reason  to  infer,  that  if  our  race  is 
perpetuated  in  physical  vigor  and  mental  power,  it  must 
be  done  in  the  parents,  by  the  practice  of  temperance  and 
industry  ;  temperance  in  the  indulgence  of  all  the  appetites 
of  our  nature,  and  industry  in  the  prosecution  of  our  callings, 
whatever  those  callings  may  be  —  giving  the  preference  al- 
ways to  out-door  activities.  No  man  was  made  to  be  a  loafer ; 
no  man  was  made  to  be  a  beast.  And  he  who  violates  nature 
in  either  case,  is  working  out  for  himself  or  his  children,  if  not 
for  both,  a  certain  and  miserable  end. 


706  ESSENCE  OF  DISEASE. 


ESSENCE  OF  DISEASE. 

THE  science  of  medication,  as  far  as  it  has  become  a  sci- 
ence, is  beautifully  simpler  and  carries  with  it,  to  the  thought- 
ful and  logical  mind,  a  high  degree  of  interest,  which  the 
reader  may  presently  see. 

All  disease  may  be  said  to  be  founded  in  an  unequal  distri- 
bution of  the  blood,  while  its  equilibrium  is  essential  to  high 
health  and  manly  vigor. 

While  it  is  true  that  too  much  blood  at  a  particular  part  of 
the  body  causes  a  diseased  condition  of  that  part,  such  as 
headache,  if  in  the  head ;  the  same  amount  of  blood  may  give 
two  very  different  diseases,  or  two  very  different  symptoms  or 
manifestations,  according  to  the  set  of  vessels  which  contains 
that  excess  of  blood,  whether  artery  or  vein. 

Many  know  the  difference  between  a  dull,  heavy,  depres- 
sive headache,  which  invites  repose,  and  the  sharp,  piercing 
pain  which  makes  sleep  an  impossibility  ;  between  the  burn- 
ing feet  in  some  forms  of  dyspepsia,  which  makes  standing  on 
the  snow  a  perfect  luxury,  and  the  cold,  clammy  sweat  of  chol- 
era consumption. 

The  blood  is  distributed  to  the  body  through  the  veins  and 
arteries,  and  where  there  is  an  artery  there  must  be  a  vein. 
The  blood  flows  through  the  veins  like  a  slow,  steady  river ; 
but  through  the  arteries  like  the  dash  of  the  leaping  waters. 

When  there  is  too  much  blood  in  the  veins,  it  is  called 
"  Congestion,"  because  it  packs,  it  gorges,  it  dams  up  :  when 
there  is  too  much  in  the  arteries,  it  is  called  "  Inflammation," 
because  it  fires  up  the  parts,  makes  them  hot,  red,  flame-like. 

When  the  veins  of  a  part  are  too  full,  there  is  a  dull  pain, 
and  the  color  is  inclined  to  a  black  red ;  when  the  arteries  are 
too  full,  there  is  a  fierce,  quick,  darting  pain,  and  a  fiery 
appearance. 

Disease  being  a  breaking  up  of  the  equilibrium  of  the  blood, 
whatever  has  a  tendency  to  restore  that  equilibrium,  to  with- 
draw the  blood  from  the  overstocked  part,  promotes  health  to 
that  extent. 

Although  the  very  last  part  to  die,  death,  in  a  sense,  begins 
at  the  heart,  by  its  not  being  able  to  relieve  itself,  at  a  given 


ESSENCE   OF  DISEASE.  707 

beat,  of  all  the  blood  that  is  in  it ;  the  Dext  beat,  and  there  is 
a  greater  surplus,  and  with  that,  less  power  to  distribute  the 
vital  fluid  to  the  extremities  of  fingers,  feet,  and  skin  ;  then 
they  begin  to  grow  clammy,  and  cold,  and  death-like.  But  if, 
almost  in  the  article  of  death,  any  great  physical  or  mental 
shock  can  be  imparted,  by  which  the  heart  shall  bound  with  a 
superhuman  throb,  and  clear  itself  of  its  entire  contents,  life 
is  saved. 

The  devoted  and  indefatigable  missionary  Durfee,  was  dying 
of  low  fever ;  the  cold  extremities,  the  fixed  eye,  the  labored 
breathing,  all  showed  that  the  powers  of  life  were  rapidly 
wasting  away,  although  a  loud  voice  would  arouse  him  to  con- 
sciousness ;  this  suggested  to  the  physician  that  if  the  heart 
could  be  relieved  of  its  load  of  blood,  if  the  equilibrium  of  the 
circulation  could  be  for  a  moment  restored,  he  might  be  saved. 
He  was  placed  on  the  floor,  and  buckets  of  water  were  poured 
upon  the  body  from  the  height  of  a  man.  He  seemed  to  wake 
up  as  from  a  heavy  sleep  or  dream ;  the  circulation  was  re- 
established, natural  warmth  restored,  the  voice  became  as 
clear,  and  the  mind  as  active  as  in  health ;  he  fondled  his 
youngest  child,  and  for  a  while  all  seemed  hopeful,  but  nature 
had  lost  her  recuperative  power,  had  not  strength  to  sustain 
herself,  and  he  gradually  pined  away. 

A  poor  old  woman  had  been  bed-ridden  for  years  with 
rheumatism,  when,  being  left  alone  one  day,  she  waked  up  to 
find  the  house  on  fire ;  with  one  bound  she  leaped  from  her 
couch,  ran  as  fast  as  anybody,  and  thereafter  could  walk  as 
well  as  others  of  her  age. 

It  is  related  of  a  celebrated  physician,  that  journeying  one 
day,  he  heard  that  a  lady  was  dying  with  a  low  fever,  and 
greatly  desired  to  see  him,  as  they  had  not  met  since  child- 
hood, when  they  were  very  dear  friends.  On  the  instant  of 
entering  the  chamber,  he  clapped  his  hands  joyously,  and  ex- 
claimed, "  The  Eagle's  Nest !  "  and  she  lived.  They  had  spent 
many  happy  hours  of  school-time  around  the  eagle's  nest,  and 
all  the  associations  coming  back  upon  her  in  an  instant,  caused 
a  shock  which  other  means  were  powerless  to  produce. 

Within  a  short  time,  a  young  man  named  Joseph  Wheeler, 
of  New  Orleans,  who  had  been  deaf  and  dumb  for  four  years, 
in  consequence  of  some  sickness,  sauntered  up  to  a  cannon's 
mouth  without  any  one  noticing  it :  the  match  was  applied, 


708  ESSENCE   OF  DISEASE. 

when  it  was  too  late  to  snatch  him  away.  He  fell  down  as  if 
dead,  but  presently  came  to  himself,  speaking  as  fluently  as  he 
ever  did,  and  answering  all  questions  put  to  him,  to  the  great 
wonderment  of  the  bystanders. 

All  are  familiar  with  the  pallor  of  the  face  induced  by  sud- 
den alarm  or  other  great  excitement :  it  is  because  that  under 
the  influence  of  great  mental  or  physical  shocks  the  blood 
retreats  to  the  heart  in  extra  quantities,  draining  the  other 
portions  of  the  body,  leaving  such  of  them  as  were  diseased 
by  reason  of  their  having  too  much  blood  there  in  their  natu- 
ral or  more  healthful  condition. 

While  the  first  effect  of  a  shock  is  to  send  the  blood  of 
the  body  in  upon  the  heart,  the  second  effect  is  for  the  heart, 
by  the  excess  of  stimulus,  to  make  a  desperate  effort  to  relieve 
itself;  this  is  "reaction,"  but  in  making  that  clearance,  al- 
though it  received  more  blood  from  the  diseased  part  than 
naturally  belonged  to  it,  it  sends  back  only  its  proper  propor- 
tion to  that  part ;  hence  the  restoration  of  the  equilibrium  and 
return  to  health. 

In  the  first  case,  the  excess  of  blood,  or  obstruction,  was  in 
the  head,  hence  the  stupor ;  in  the  old  woman,  it  was  in  the 
joints ;  in  the  young  man,  it  was  in  the  ear ;  while  in  the  case 
of  the  "  Eagle's  Nest,"  it  was  in  the  internal  organs,  the  liver 
most. 

But  there  are  less  heroic  methods  of  restoring  the  equilib- 
rium ;  more  quiet  ways  of  equalizing  the  circulation. 

Persons  have  appeared  to  be  dying,  when  the  mustard  or 
blister  plaster  applied  to  the  wrists  and  ankles  has  drawn  the 
blood  to  the  parts,  evidenced  by  their  being  reddened,  thus 
relieving  the  heart,  and  saving  life. 

A  man  sits  down  to  dinner  with  a  severe  headache,  eats 
heartily,  and  feels  it  no  longer.  It  is  because  an  excess  of 
blood  is  required  in  the  stomach  when  it  is  filled  with  food  ; 
the  brain,  by  furnishing  its  quota,  is  relieved  of  the  surplus 
blood  which  caused  the  pain,  and  the  equilibrium  is  restored. 
But  a  hearty  meal  will  not  always  remove  headache,  for  rea- 
sons not  necessary  now  to  be  explained. 

Insane  persons  cannot  sleep  enough,  the  arteries  of  the 
brain  are  too  full  of  blood ;  it  is  sent  to  them  in  too  large 
quantities :  hence,  in  some  cases,  sleep  has  been  obtained  by 
feeding  the  lunatic  six  or  eight  times  a  day,  thereby  keeping 


COMMON  SICKNESS.  709 

the  stomach  full  of  food,  and  drawing  the  blood  there  for  its 
digestion,  thus  relieving  the  brain.  The  medical  proprie- 
tor of  a  lunatic  asylum  in  England  has  pursued  a  plan  of  this 
sort  for  fifty  years,  with  very  successful  results.  Most  ob- 
servant readers  have  felt  the  somnific  effects  of  a  hearty 
dinner. 

It  is  by  restoring  the  equilibrium  of  the  circulation  that  the 
reaction  of  the  cold  shower-bath  removes  some  forms  of  dis- 
ease, which  failed  to  be  reached  in  other  ways. 

The  practical  lesson  of  this  article  is,  they  will  live  the 
healthiest  and  the  longest,  who  have  the  equilibrium  of  the 
circulation  least  interfered  with ;  hence  an  important  means 
of  avoiding  sickness  and  attaining  a  good  old  age,  is  to  live 
quietly,  uniformly,  and  regularly  ;  there  is  no  preventive  of 
disease  equal  to  this,  and  it  is  well  worth  while  for  all  to 
practise  it. 


COMMON  SICKNESS. 

WHEN  one  man  gets  mad  at  the  stupidity  of  another,  he 
calls  him  a  goat,  a  goose,  or  an  ass ;  but  these  much-abused 
animals  are  respectable  as  to  their  acquirements  in  the  judi- 
cious treatment  of  themselves  when  ailing,  in  comparison  with 
the  masses  of  humanity  ;  in  comparison,  indeed,  with  many 
persons  of  superior  intelligence  and  culture ;  these,  in  com- 
mon with  other  animals,  do  three  things  when  suffering:  First, 
they  court  quiet ;  second,  practise  abstinence  as  to  food ; 
third,  seek  warmth.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  if  these 
three  things  were  promptly  and  judiciously  attended  to,  three 
fourths  of  all  human  ailments  would  be  more  speedily  alleviat^ 
ed,  and  would  be  ultimately  cured  with  a  greater  certainty 
than  by  the  aid  of  all  the  medicines  ever  known;  not  that 
medicine,  in  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  physician,  is  under- 
valued, but  that  natural  remedies  are  overlooked.  We  call 
quiet,  abstinence,  and  warmth  "  natural  remedies,"  because 
our  instincts  promptly  indicate  them  when  disease  invades  the 
system.  When  we  do  not  feel  well,  we  become  indisposed  to 
move  about ;  we  want  to  lie  down  ;  we  do  not  evert  care  to 
make  the  exertion  to  talk ;  very  generally  we  feel  chilly,  and 
hover  around  the  fire,  and  almost  always  we  very  soon  begin 


710  REPRODUCTIVE  POWER   OF  FILTH. 

to  loathe  the  very  thought  of  food.  And  yet  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  four  persons  out  of  five,  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  feel 
"  out  of  sorts,"  as  it  is  expressed,  bethink  themselves  of  what 
they  shall  take,  and  too  many  r  take  a  drink,"  that  is,  begin  to 
swill  brandy,  rum,  gin,  whiskey,  or  more  vulgar  beer.  Why, 
a  "  calf"  wouldn't  do  such  a  thing,  but  man,  with  all  his  boast- 
ed intelligence,  does,  and  thus  proves  himself  the  greatest 
calf,  or  goose,  or  goat,  6f  them  all. 


REPRODUCTIVE  POWER  OF  FILTH. 

A  SINGLE  atom  of  Spanish  moss  attaches  itself  to  a  southern 
tree ;  every  moment  and  hour,  day  and  night,  summer  and  win- 
ter, it  steadily  extends  itself,  until  the  whole  tree  is  hung  in 
the  drapery  of  death. 

The  toad-stool  mushroom,  so  deadly  in  its  nature,  is  the 
work  of  a  night,  and  augments  with  wonderful  rapidity. 

So  it  is  with  a  low  grade  of  animal  and  vegetable  growth, 
which  feeds  on  filth,  and  reproduces  itself  with  the  utmost 
celerity,  thus  spreading  its  area,  and  concentrating  its  cor- 
rupting and  destructive  agencies,  sweeping  away  human  life 
like  chaff. 

These  pernicious  growths,  scarcely  themselves  perceptible 
to  the  naked  eye,  have  something  immeasurably  more  minute, 
which  answers  to  seeds,  which,  flying  in  every  direction,  and 
attaching  themselves  to  all  moist  surfaces,  begin  instantly  to 
grow.  Thus  it  is,  that  spots  of  neglected  filth  need  but  a  lit- 
tle moisture  and  warmth  to  breed  their  deadly  contagions,  and 
scatter  their  leprous  diseases  far  and  wide. 

Let  every  family,  then,  remember  that  each  particle  of  damp 
dirt  about  their  dwellings  is  a  plague-spot,  and  let  every  ser- 
vant and  child  be  visited  with  the  severest  reproof  who  know- 
ingly permits  its  continuance  for  a  single  moment. 


TICKLING  IN  THE   THROAT.  711 


TICKLING  IN  THE  THROAT. 

TICKLING  in  the  throat  always  precedes  death  by  common 
consumption  of  the  lungs  in  about  two  years,  on  an  average  ; 
but  this  tickling  is  not  always  followed  by  consumption.  Com- 
mon prudence  then  suggests,  that  in  every  case  of  tickling  in 
the  throat,  which  seems  to  be  at  the  little  hollow  at  the  lower 
part  of  the  windpipe,  or  just  above  the  top  of  the  breast-bone, 
—  especially  if  such  a  sensation  is  more  or  less  decided  for 
days  and  weeks,  at  intervals,  —  an  effort  should  be  made  to 
ascertain  its  character,  and  to  use  safe  and  judicious  means  for 
its  removal. 

It  would  not  be  safe  practice  to  use  means  to  destroy  the 
sensation  of  tickling,  merely  smothering  the  symptom,  while 
the  cause  of  it  was  in  operation.  Shutting  up  the  hatches  of 
a  ship,  to  prevent  the  escape  of  smoke  while  the  hold  is  on 
fire,  does  not  quench  the  flame,  though  it  may  seem  to  some 
to  do  so. 

It  would  not  be  judicious  to  apply  a  remedy  to  the  tickling 
spot,  when  the  cause  of  the  sensation  was  a  foot  or  two  away 
in  a  different  organ  of  the  body.  Both  these  positions  will  be 
better  understood  by  enumerating  some  of  the  causes  of  the 
tickling  in  the  throat. 

1.  If  a  man  laughs  heartily,  there  will  sometimes  be  such  a 
hasty,  urgent  tickling,  as  to  make  the  cessation  of  laughter 
imperative. 

2.  Persons  in  robust  health  will  cough  violently  on  retir- 
ing to  bed,  the  tickling  being  occasioned  by  lying  with  the 
hands  or  arms  uncovered,  thus  cooling  the  skin,  contracting 
the  pores,  and  driving  in  upon  the  lungs,  to  oppress  and  irri- 
tate, what  should  more  naturally  have  had  an  exit  from  the 
body  in  the  shape  of  insensible  perspiration  through  the  skin  ; 
as  soon   as  the  arms  are  covered  up,  and  have  had  time  to 
become  healthfully  warm  on  the  surface,  the  tickling  ceases, 
and  the  cough  disappears. 

Suppose  that  paregoric,  laudanum,  or  any  other  of  the  thou- 
sand and  one  remedies  for  coughs,  colds,  and  consumption,  should 
be  given  to  an  extent  sufficient  to  dull  the  sensation  of  tickling, 
as  any  anodyne  would  do,  the  cough  would  cease  for  a  while, 


712  TICKLING  IN  THE   THROAT. 

but  the  cause  being  in  operation,  the  skin  would  become 
colder  and  colder,  tending  to  produce  before  the  morning  an 
attack  of  pleurisy,  lung  fever,  or  dangerous  hemorrhage. 

3.  Many  a  person  has  gone  to  bed  at  night,  to  be  waked  up, 
in  a  few  minutes,  with  a  cough,  which  would  continue  for 
hours,    most    effectually    preventing    sleep  —  irritating    the 
mind,  making  the  body  more  and  more  restless,  the  cough, 
meanwhile,  growing  more  and  more  annoying,  until  there  is 
first  gagging,  and  finally  vomiting  of  everything  eaten  at  the 
last  meal,  and  in  ten  minutes  the  person  will  be  sound  asleep, 
and  remain  so  until  the  morning.     On  inquiry,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  food  was  thrown  up  almost  unchanged,  except  that  it 
was  "  as  sour  as  vinegar  ;  "  in  other  words,  it  was  undigested. 
The  person  had  eaten  too  much  or  too  fast,  or  had  taken  some- 
thing which  the  stomach  could  not  work  up. 

Suppose  an  anodyne,  or  a  "  troche,"  or  a  "  tablet "  had  been 
taken  to  an  extent  to  remove  the  tickling  or  to  smother  the 
cough ;  the  undigested  food  which  caused  the  tickling  would 
have  remained  in  the  stomach,  becoming  more  and  more  sour 
and  noxious,  until  nature,  outraged,  brings  spasms,  convul- 
sions, or  apoplexy  to  relieve  herself.  This  is  a  stomach  cough, 
requiring  the  removal  of  its  contents  by  an  emetic,  and  not 
such  remedies  as  would  merely  smother  up  the  sensation  of 
tickling,  which,  although  felt  at  the  bottom  of  the  throat,  was 
caused  by  a  certain  condition  of  things  in  the  stomach  a  foot 
or  two  distant ;  much  in  the  same  manner  as  the  tingling  or 
numbness  is  felt  at  the  ends  of  the  fingers  sometimes,  when  a 
blow  has  been  given  at  the  elbow.  There  is  a  nerve  with 
two  branches,  one  of  which  goes  to  the  stomach,  the  other  to 
the  throat  and  lungs,  and  in  certain  conditions,  when  one 
branch  is  in  a  suffering  condition,  the  other  is  more  or  less 
affected ;  and  this  is  what  physicians  mean  sometimes,  when 
tbey  speak  of  the  relative  condition  of  two  parts  as  being  in 
"  sympathy." 

4.  Many  have  experienced  the  sensation,  and  know  very  well 
the  meaning  of  the  expression  which  we  very  often  hear,  of  a 
"  crumb  going  the  wrong  way,"  induced  by  a  particle  of  food 
or  drop  of  water  going  into  the  windpipe  and  down  to  the  top 
of  the  lungs,  instead  of  being  passed  into  the  stomach ;  this  mis- 
direction being  occasioned  by  attempting  to  breathe  at  the  in- 
stant of  swallowing :  in  this  case  nature  sets  up  a  violent  and 


TICKLING  IN   THE   THROAT.  713 

irrepressible  tickling  in  the  throat,  the  object  of  which  is  to 
excite  cough,  which  is  a  violent  expulsion  of  air  through  the 
branches  of  the  windpipe  down  among  the  lungs,  and  through 
the  windpipe  itself,  in  the  hope,  as  it  were,  that  the  offending 
particle  may  be  thrown  out  of  the  system :  here  nature  origi- 
nates her  own  mode  of  cure  —  excites  a  cough.  Sometimes  the 
particle  is  so  large  that  the  cough  cannot  dislodge  it;  then 
the  surgeon  must  cut  down  into  the  lungs  and  take  it  out, 
otherwise  the  cough  would  become  so  violent  as  to  cause 
fatal  hemorrhage  of  the  lungs,  by  the  bursting  of  a  large  blood- 
vessel, from  the  strain  of  the  violent  coughing. 

But  suppose  a  remedy  had  been  addressed  to  the  tickling 
sensation,  and  had  suppressed  it,  which  means  removing  the 
cough,  then  the  foreign  matter  would  remain  in  the  lungs,  to 
cause,  in  a  few  days,  a  dangerous  or  even  fatal  form  of  inflam- 
mation, or  of  pneumonia. 

Croup  is  a  word  of  terror  to  every  young  mother ;  it  is 
simply  a  form  of  diphtheria  — -  the  very  sound  of  which  is  often 
the  knell  of  death.  This  croup  is  instantly  known  by  the  pe- 
culiarity of  the  cough,  which,  once  heard  by  a  parent,  will 
never  be  forgotten.  The  essence  of  the  disease  is  the  forma- 
tion of  a  solid  substance  on  what  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  the 
inner  side  of  the  windpipe ;  this  goes  on  thickening  until  the 
windpipe  is  closed  and  air  enough  cannot  pass  into  the  lungs 
to  support  life,  and  the  poor  sufferer  is  smothered  to  death. 
The  true  remedy  is  to  do  something  which  will  loosen  or 
detach  and  absorb  this  membrane,  allowing  the  tickling  and 
cough  to  remain,  so  as  to  force  it  out  of  the  windpipe  as 
soon  as  it  is  loosened:  it  often  comes  out  a  mass  of  almost 
leathery  tenacity.  This  being  the  case,  as  every  intelligent 
physician  will  admit,  whatever  is  done  to  remove  the  tickling, 
or  the  cough,  does  just  that  much  towards  destroying  all 
chance  of  life. 

In  all  the  above  cases,  the  tickling  in  the  throat  is  nature's 
mode  of  exciting  cough,  and  it  is  precisely  so  in  consumption. 
Cough  is  curative  ;  is  nature's  cure  ;  and  to  smother  cough, 
without  removing  what  causes  it,  is  to  hinder  nature,  and  take 
away  all  chance  of  cure.  When  a  man  clearly  has  consump- 
tion, coughs  a  great  deal,  has  been  bringing  up  yellow  matter 
for  a  long  time,  if  his  cough  should  subside  he  will  inevitably 
die  in  three  or  four  days,  because  the  cough  helps  to  bring 


714  IDIOTS. 

that  matter  out  of  the  lungs,  and  keeps  them  clear  ;  but  when 
the  cough  becomes  so  weak  or  so  unfrequent  as  not  to  remove 
the  matter  as  fast  as  it  is  formed,  the  lungs  begin  to  fill  up 
with  it,  air  cannot  get  in,  and  life  ends.  The  only  hope  of 
curing  consumption  is  to  promote  cough  on  the  one  hand,  so 
as  to  get  the  lungs  clear  of  the  matter  in  them,  and  prevent 
the  formation  of  more.  But  the  popular  sentiment  is,  that  in 
proportion  as  there  is  less  cough,  the  chances  of  life  are  in- 
creasing, and  willingly  and  hopefully  the  patient  takes  what 
"  cures  his  cough,"  and  is  thus  led,  a  willing  victim,  to  the 
grave  of  his  own  digging.  So  much  are  men,  with  all  their 
boasted  intelligence,  like  the  silly  creature  which  feels  itself 
safe  when  it  can  hide  its  head  in  a  hole,  to  be  crushed,  the 
next  instant,  in  the  jaws  of  its  relentless  pursuer. 


IDIOTS. 

IDIOTCY  is  arrested  development.  There  is  in  all  cases  a 
deficiency  of  brain,  a  low  physical  organization,  or  functional 
disorganization. 

The  humane  and  accomplished  Dr.  Wilbur  says,  that  out  of  a 
class  of  twenty  pupils,  only  three  could  count  ten.  Their 
most  universal  fault  was  gluttony.  Their  great  want  is  -the 
power  of  attention.  Many  cannot  talk  ;  it  often  requires  two 
or  three  years  to  enable  them  to  utter  a  single  word  distinctly. 

In  almost  all  cases,  home  treatment  only  confirms  the  mala- 
dy. In  three  hundred  and  fifty -nine  cases,  all  but  four  origi- 
nated in  parents  who  had  brought  on  some  confirmed  disease 
by  the  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature.  In  every  single  in- 
stance, the  four  excepted,  either  one  or  both  parents  were 
either  very  unhealthy,  scrofulous,  disposed  to  insanity,  in- 
dulged in  animal  excesses,  or  had  married  blood  relations. 
Let  every  reader  commit  to  memory  these  five  causes,  for  to 
have  an  idiotic  child,  how  terrible  the  infliction  ! 

More  than  one  fourth  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-nine  idiots 
were  the  children  of  drunkards ;  one  out  of  every  twenty 
was  the  child  of  the  marriage  of  near  relations ;  in  one  such 
family  five  children  out  of  eight  were  idiotic.  If  then,  health, 
temperance,  and  chastity  are  not  duties,  then  are  we  irrespon- 
sible. 


BUGGY  SUGAR.  715 


WALKING  ERECTLY. 

WALKING  erectly  not  only  adds  to  manliness  of  appearance, 
but  develops  the  chest  and  promotes  the  general  health  in  a 
high  degree,  because  the  lungs,  being  relieved  of  the  pres- 
sure made  by  having  the  head  downward  and  bending  the 
chest  in,  admit  the  air  freely  and  fully  down  to  the  very  bot- 
tom of  the  lungs. 

If  an  effort  of  the  mind  is  made  to  throw  the  shoulders  back, 
a  feeling  of  tiredness  and  awkwardness  is  soon  experienced, 
or  it  is  forgotten.  The  use  of  braces  to  hold  up  the  body  is 
necessarily  pernicious ;  for  there  can  be  no  brace  which  does 
not  press  upon  some  part  of  the  person  more  than  is  natural, 
hence  cannot  fail  to  impede  injuriously  the  circulation  of  that 
part.  But  were  there  none  of  these  objections,  the  brace  would 
soon  adapt  itself  to  the  bodily  position,  like  a  hat,  or  shoe,  or 
new  garment,  and  would  cease  to  be  a  brace. 

To  maintain  an  erect  position,  or  recover  it  when  lost,  in  a 
manner  which  is  at  once  natural,  easy,  and  efficient,  it  is  only 
necessary  to  walk  habitually  with  the  eyes  fixed  on  an  object 
ahead,  a  little  higher  than  your  own,  the  eve  of  a  house,  the 
top  of  a  man's  hat,  or  simply  keep  your  chin  a  very  little 
above  a  horizontal  line,  or,  it  will  answer  to  walk  with  your 
hands  behind  you  ;  if  either  of  these  things  is  done,  the  neces- 
sary, easy,  and  legitimate  effect  is  to  relieve  the  chest  from 
pressure  ;  the  air  gets  in  more  easily,  develops  it  more  fully, 
and  permeates  the  lungs  more  extensively,  causing  a  more 
perfect  purification  of  the  blood,  imparting  higher  health,  more 
color  to  the  cheek,  and  compelling  a  throwing  out  of  the  toes. 
To  derive  the  highest  benefit  from  walking,  hold  up  the  head, 
keep  the  mouth  closed,  and  move  briskly. 


BUGGY  SUGAR. 

THE  author  believes  he  has  eaten  more  sugar  than  any 
other  two  men  of  his  size  and  age,  and  now,  as  he  is  approach- 
ing a  hundred  years,  finds  himself  as  lively  as  a  cricket,  or  a 
newly-made  tadpole  turned  into  a  frog ;  and  yet  Mr.  Robert 


716  DIARRHCEA. 

Nicol,  of  Greenwich,  Scotland,  and  Professor  Cameron,  of  Dub- 
lin, have  been  taking  a  trial  at  microscopy,  and  say  that  they 
find  in  every  teaspoonful  of  raw  sugar  about  a  thousand  of  the 
ugliest  little  wretches  wriggling  about,  with  horns  and  dag- 
gers, ready  to  poke  them  through  our  vitals  at  any  moment, 
and  without  the  slightest  compunction ;  in  fact,  they  rather 
like  it. 

In  plain  phrase,  there  are  about  forty  thousand  of  these  liv- 
ing monsters  in  every  pound  of  raw  brown  sugar.  What  a 
sight  of  them  we  must  have  devoured  in  our  lifetime !  but, 
we  think,  it  will  be  rather  better  to  take  to  the  use  of  refined 
sugar,  which  is  perfectly  free  from  the  insect. 

Microscopic  science  seems  to  be  revealing  the  fact,  that 
every  grain,  and  fruit,  and  vegetable  has  some  living  thing 
which  revels,  eats,  lives,  and  dies  in  it :  tobacco,  cotton,  wheat, 
potatoes,  all  have  their  depredators  and  enemies.  But  science, 
while  she  reveals  dangers  we  never  dreamed  of,  also  finds 
a  remedy,  sooner  or  later.  Thorough  cooking  destroys  the 
trichina  of  pork,  and  refined  sugar  has  no  "Acarus  Sacchari." 


DIARRHCEA. 

IT  may  be  well  for  persons  travelling  during  the  summer 
to  know  that,  in  case  a  physician  is  not  at  hand,  a  safe  reme- 
dy, of  considerable  efficacy,  is  found  in  stirring  a  little  wheat 
flour  in  a  glass  of  cold  water,  until  it  is  of  the  consistency  of 
thick  cream,  drink  it  down,  and  repeat  it  several  times  in  the 
course  of  the  day,  if  needed.  Meanwhile  eat  nothing,  drink 
nothing,  and  lie  down,  if  practicable.  The  flour  may  act 
mechanically,  not  medicinally,  by  plugging  up  the  relaxed 
mouths,  through  which  the  watery  particles  are  poured  into 
the  intestinal  canal. 

Here,  diarrhoeas  are  often  the  result  of  the  greater  coolness 
of  morning  and  evening  over  midday,  and  the  injurious  effects 
of  bad  air  on  an  empty  stomach ;  hence,  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant rules  for  travellers,  in  all  seasons,  climes,  and  countries, 
is,  never  foil  to  breakfast  before  you  ride. 


WHAT  A  FOOL.  717 


"WHAT  A  FOOL!" 

THIS  is  a  remark  which  many  a  person  has  made  of  himself 
quite  a  number  of  times  in  the  course  of  his  life  ;  not  for  the 
purpose  of  information,  but  as  a  means  of  expressing  his 
strongest  conviction  that  he  himself  was  the  most  insensible 
simpleton  within  his  knowledge  ;  and  it  is  a  fact,  that  the 
wisest  of  men  do  commit  acts  which  are  perfectly  unaccounta- 
ble, except  on  the  supposition  that  there  are  moments  in  the 
lifetime  of  all,  when  the  mind  is  bereft  of  its  reasoning  pow- 
ers ;  when  its  rationality  is  in  abeyance.  Whoever  has  had 
no  such  experience,  let  him  turn  to  some  other  article,  with 
the  congratulation  of  having  companionship  with  that  most 
graceless  scamp  of  Scripture  record,  who  asserted  it  as  his 
conviction  that  he  "  was  not  as  other  men  are."  As  for  our- 
self,  we  own  up,  in  manner  and  form  following,  to  wit :  — 

At  daylight,  on  a  December  morning,  we  found  ourselves,  in 
night-gown,  pants,  and  India-rubbers,  standing  in  the  kitchen 

door,  surveying  our  plantation  of  one  thousand  square 

feet,  covered  with  half  a  yard  of  snow,  and  the  following 
thoughts  ran  through  the  brain  in  less  than  half  a  minute: 
This  is  washing  day,  and  will  be  one  of  cloudless  sunshine ; 
but  the  flags  are  covered  with  snow,  and  our  girls  must  either 
remove  it,  or  trample  through  it  all  day ;  in  either  case  involv- 
ing cold,  wet  shoes,  and  wet  feet  —  threatening  severe  colds, 
sickness,  and  perhaps  protracted  suffering,  if  not  death  itself. 
Now,  if  we  have  any  hobby  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  it  is  the 
avoidance  of  sickness,  whether  as  to  ourself  or  others,  because 
it  is  such  a  trouble  to  be  sick ;  it  deranges  the  whole  house- 
hold, and  imposes  additional  and  unpleasant  labor  on  every 
member  of  the  family;  to  say  nothing  of  that  wearing  solicitude 
which  eats  out  every  domestic  enjoyment,  and  engenders  an 
atmosphere  of  sadness  and  gloom,  of  uncertainty  and  forebod- 
ing, which  waste  the  strength,  wear  out  the  body,  and  press 
upon  the  spirits  with  an  intolerable  weight.  In  the  case  in 
hand,  the  shortest,  safest,  and  best  course  would  be  for  us  to 
remove  the  snow  ourself;  and  why  not?  We  were  young  and 
vigorous  ;  it  would  not  take  long,  and  it  would  be  such  a  help 
to  the  girls ;  the  strength  which  they  would  expend  on  that 


718  WHAT  A  FOOL. 

unusual  work,  if  employed  in  rubbing  the  linen,  would  be  an 
advantage  to  our  three  young  daughters  and  our  youthful  son 
and  heir:  and  here  peeped  in  that  miserable  little  elf,  self; 
M  if  our  girls  get  sick,  we  might  waste  months  in  finding  two 
more  anything  like  as  good,"  —  for  two  good  servants  in  any 
one  family  in  New  York  is  the  highest  prize  in  any  lottery, 
and  we  have  more  ;  they  need  no  scoldings  from  one  month's 
end  to  another,  and  there  is  not  a  loud,  angry  word  heard  in 
our  household ;  now  is  it  not  worth  while  to  be  considerate, 
and  keep  our  "  help  "  under  such  circumstances  ?  And  so, 
although  the  thermometer  was  about  twenty  above  zero,  and 
a  strong,  cold  west  wind  was  blowing,  we  went  to  work,  and 
when  it  was  completed  the  whole  body  was  in  a  profuse  per- 
spiration ;  but  the  neck,  throat,  and  upper  part  of  the  chest 
felt  as  if  they  were  frozen  a  foot,  more  or  less,  deep  ;  and  then 
came  out  the  expression,  with  very  considerable  unction, 
w  What  an  unmitigated  fool  have  I  been,  to  be  working  all  this 
time  with  head,  and  neck,  and  chest  exposed  to  such  a  pier- 
cing cold  wind  1 "  Then  came  up  visions  of  croup,  diphtheria, 
quinsy,  putrid  sore  throat,  and  a  dozen  other  hobgoblins,  any 
one  of  which  might  have  put  us  past  cure  within  forty-eight 
hours ;  and  already  there  was  inability  to  draw  a  full,  deep, 
satisfactory  breath.  And  now,  reader,  for  the  idea  which  we 
wanted  to  impress  on  your  mind,  at  the  expense  of  being 
thought  a  very  egotistic  individual :  but  if  we  can  put  you  in 
a  way  of  saving  your  in(?)valuable  life,  we  will  feel  well 
compensated.  The  only  course  to  pursue  was  to  keep  up  a 
vigorous  circulation,  so  as  to  prevent  chilliness ;  for  if  that 
had  taken  place,  pneumonia  would  have  been  a  pretty  certain 
event ;  but  exercise  for  this  purpose  was  out  of  the  question, 
because  we  were  already  jaded  out :  perhaps  a  non-teetotaler 
would  have  resorted  to  a  deep  and  hearty  swig  of  whiskey  ; 
but  that  was  not  in  our  line,  and  besides,  there  was  not  a 
drop  in  the  house :  then  there  remained  but  one  means  left, 
the  application  of  heat,  by  means  of  fire  and  hot  water ;  so  we 
paddled  the  hands  and  face  in  water  as  hot  as  could  be  borne, 
and  it  was  exceedingly  grateful ;  then  dressed  as  rapidly  as 
possible,  and  sat  by  a  red-hot  kitchen  range,  until  the  whole 
body  was  perspiring  again.  As  far  as  we  know,  we  did  not 
suflfer  the  slightest  injury  by  the  unwise  exposures  which 
have  just  been  detailed.  Perhaps  the  first  thought  of  the 


WHAT  A  FOOL.  719 

reader  would  have  been  to  have  applied  the  hot  water  to  the 
neck,  throat,  and  upper  part  of  the  chest :  that  would  have 
been  inconvenient,  would  have  been  but  partial,  and  would 
have  dribbled  the  upper  end  of  the  flannel  shirt,  which  was 
already  wet  with  perspiration,  and  was  also  very  cold ;  but  the 
hands  and  the  face  were  at  the  extremities,  and  hot  water 
would  bring  the  blood  to  them,  through  the-parts  which 
seemed  to  be  so  cold,  and  thus  warm  them  up  in  its  progress ; 
the  hands  could  be  kept  continuously  hot,  by  keeping  them 
immersed  in  hot  water ;  the  same  with  the  face  ;  but  to  apply 
water  to  the  neck,  with  the  hand  or  sponge,  would  be  but  for 
an  instant,  and  only  for  the  space  which  was  covered  by  the 
hand,  and  it  may  be  useful  to  remark  here,  that  the  safest  way 
to  cool  off,  even  in  summer,  is  to  dip  the  hands  in  hot  water, 
and  raise  them  in  the  air  ;  do  this  successively.  The  philoso- 
phy of  it  is,  that  the  evaporation  of  heat  is  very  rapid,  and  is 
carried  off  by  the  steam  caused  by  the  hot  water  and  warm 
skin :  cold  water  will  do  the  same  thing,  because  the  heat  of 
the  skin  converts  it  into  steam :  but  it  is  a  harsh  method,  *and 
is  never  so  safe  ;  and  many  times,  when  a  person  comes  into 
the  house  from  a  cold  walk  or  ride,  feeling  as  if  a  chill  were 
imminent,  a  most  comfortable  method  of  averting  the  chill,  and 
of  warming  up  the  whole  blood,  is  to  immerse  the  hands  in 
hot  water,  and  keep  them  in  motion  ;  for,  if  allowed  to  remain 
still,  the  layer  of  water  next  to  them  becomes  in  a  measure 
cold ;  while  by  moving  them  about,  the  skin  finds  new  layers 
of  hot  water,  and  thus  every  motion  is  grateful.  The  same 
may  be  said  as  to  the  feet:  it  is  certainly  a  very  agreeable 
method  of  getting  warmed  up ;  and  when  you  have  become 
so,  it  is  well  to  dip  both  hands  and  feet  into  a  vessel  of  cold 
water  for  a  second  or  two.  Of  course,  if  the  extremities  are 
frozen  stiff  with  cold,  or  without  feeling,  then  snow  or  very 
cold  water  should  be  applied  under  the  supervision  of  a  phy- 
sician. 

But  was  it  not  undignified  for  us  to  be  shovelling  snow  in 
trouserloons  and  shoes  ?  We  do  not  consider  anything  "  infra 
dig."  which  promotes  health,  and  is  a  help  to  others.  Trous- 
seau, one  of  the  greatest  medical  men  of  his  age,  —  whom 
kings  and  queens,  within  ten  years,  have  been  glad  to  have  it 
in  their  power  to  consult,  —  tells  us  that  he  brought  on  a  very 
severe  attack  of  asthma  by  concealing  himself  in  the  hayloft 
to  see  whether  his  coachman  did  not  steal  his  horse-feed. 


720  WHAT  A  FOOL. 

The  great  Newton  was  found  once  in  a  less  dignified  em- 
ployment, smoking  a  vulgar  pipe,  puffing  away  for  life,  like  a 
young  steam  engine  drawing  smoke  in,  and  then,  as  soon  as  it 
got  it  in,  go  about  hustling  it  out,  and  this  for  a  whole  hour  at 
a  time  ;  and  what's  the  use  of  it?  it  makes  you  no  wiser  and 
no  better:  you  infume  your  whole  clothing;  you  spit,  and 
hawk,  and  scatter  around  your  saliva,  on  carpet,  floor,  furni- 
ture, and  the  dress  of  your  friends  ;  bespattering  your  own 
clothing  with  nauseous  looking  stains,  and  often  having  a 
streak  of  filthy  slaver  extending  from  the  corners  of  the 
mouth ;  and  then  to  find  ourself  such  a  helpless  slave  to  the 
beastly  custom :  but  this  is  off  the  subject.  Sir  Isaac's  sweet- 
heart is  reported  to  have  been  sitting  by  him,  and  wishing  to 
adjust  the  fire  of  his  pipe,  he  took  her  finger,  instead  of  his 
own,  and  so  burned  it  as  to  outrage  her  feelings,  and  she  nev- 
er would  have  anything  to  do  with  him  more ;  so  we  think 
our  action  in  the  premises  will  favorably  compare  with  that  of 
the  great  physician,  or  the  greater  philosopher.  But  let  us 
here  tell  a  valuable  secret  as  to  the  manner  in  which  great 
men  employ  their  time. 

No  man  can  study  advantageously  all  the  time  ;  there  must 
be  some  relaxation,  or  the  brain  will  become  disorganized,  or 
otherwise  hopelessly  diseased.  No  man  ought  to  study  hard 
on  one  subject  more  than  four  hours  a  day,  and  give  ten  hours 
to  purposes  of  dressing,  sleeping,  and  eating,  leaving  ten  hours 
for  mental  recreation,  that  is,  mental  rest,  which  is  done  in 
two  ways :  first,  engaging  the  mind  in  thinking  about  some- 
thing else,  that  is,  putting  other  organs  of  the  brain  to  work  ; 
second,  engaging  in  muscular  motion,  which  does  good  in  two 
ways  :  it  works  out  of  the  system  the  waste  particles  made  by 
hard  thought,  and  thus  purifies  the  blood,  fitting  it  for  build- 
ing up  the  brain,  repairing  its  wastes,  making  it  ready  for 
new  work.  But  muscular  motion  does  good  in  another  way ; 
the  mind  is  diverted  to  it,  and  is  thus  rested  from  the  main 
study ;  hence,  the  true  policy  of  hard  students  is  not  to  sit,  or 
loll,  or  lounge  about,  but  to  be  doing  something  with  the  hands 
or  feet  which  is  of  sufficient  interest  to  engage  the  mental 
notice,  and,  if  pleasurably  engaged,  so  much  the  better,  even 
by  fifty  or  a  hundred  fold ;  hence,  the  three  employments  or 
side  works  of  the  three  great  men  named,  were  really  mental 
rests,  recreations,  whether  it  was  Trousseau  playing  watch- 


WHAT  A  FOOL.  721 

man  in  his  hay-loft,  or  Newton  feeling  his  pipe  with  his  sweet- 
heart's finger,  or  the  author  clearing  the  flags  of  snow  in  shirt 
and  pants  at  daylight,  of  a  December  morning,  for  an  hour  or 
two,  for  the  benefit  of  two  good,  tidy-looking,  young,  unsophis- 
ticated servant  girls,  who  had  never  "  worked  out  "  before. 
We  rather  think  that  our  mode  of  resting  the  mind  was  the 
most  utilitarian,  philosophical,  humane,  and  least  wickedly 
risky  of  the  three. 

It  will  be  useful  to  remark  here,  that  we  do  not  like  to  use 
our  eyes  in  reading  or  writing  until  breakfast  has  been  eaten, 
because  they  are  stronger  all  the  day  afterwards ;  nor  do  we 
use  them  in  that  way  after  twilight ;  this  has  been  our  uni- 
form habit,  with  the  result,  as  we  think,  that  we  were  able  to 
do  without  the  use  of  glasses  for  eight  or  ten  years  after  our 
old  schoolmates  of  the  same  age  had  been  using  them,  and 
we  are  writing  now  without  any  glasses  whatever.  Albert 
Barnes,  the  eminent  commentator,  rose  habitually  at  four 
o'clock  for  study,  and  soon  had  to  abandon  all  study,  go  abroad, 
and,  after  years  of  lost  time,  is  prematurely  laid  on  the  shelf, 
from  diseased  eyes. 

Literary  and  professional  men,  in  consulting  us,  often  in- 
quire, with  great  earnestness,  how  can  we  take  exercise  in  a 
large  city,  or  town,  or  village  ?  —  "  there  is  nothing  that  we 
can  do."  In  the  first  place,  eat  about  one  half  less  every  day, 
and  you  will  at  once  require  but  half  the  amount  of  exercise : 
now  for  the  remainder.  Have  you  a  family  ?  If  you  have  not, 
you  need  not  take  any  exercise,  and  you  can  eat,  and  stuff,  and 
guzzle  all  day,  for  you  are  of  no  account,  and  the  sooner  you 
die  off  and  make  room  for  a  better  man,  the  better  for  sbciety 
at  large.  But  taking  it  for  granted  that  you  have  a  family, 
like  other  respectable  men,  and  live  in  a  brown-stone  house  on 
Murray  Hill,  New  York,  there  are  a  multitude  of  very  useful 
things  you  can  do,  every  day,  to  the  comfort  of  your  family, 
the  benefit  of  your  health,  the  improvement  of  your  digestion, 
the  soundness  of  your  sleep,  the  vigor  of  your  thought,  and 
the  benignity  of  your  disposition.  Get  up  at  five  o'clock,  win- 
ter and  summer,  go  down  into  the  cellar,  riddle  out  all  the 
cinders  of  the  day  before  from  range,  furnace,  and  grates, 
sprinkle  them  with  water,  and  put  them  in  the  furnace  ;  if  you 
are  hardy  and  systematic  you  can  do  all  this  in  half  an  hour, 
and  save  about  half  a  dollar  besides,  if  you  have  a  good-sized 


722  BRAIN  AND  BODY  WORK. 

family ;  next,  help  your  servant  girls,  giving  them  a  chance  to 
sleep  a  little  longer,  by  kindling  a  few  of  the  fires,  and,  if  you 
are  handy,  you  will  save  a  good  deal  of  paper  and  wood  kin- 
dling every  day. 

'Literary  and  professional  men  maintain  an  idle  theory  when 
they  consider  every  moment  lost  which  is  not  employed  in 
reading,  writing,  or  investigation ;  it  is  loss  of  time  in  the  long 
run  which  should  alarm  the  individual ;  it  is  the  curtailment 
of  human  life  for  ten,  twenty,  and  even  thirty  years,  which 
should  startle  the  mind,  and  lead  to  a  wiser  way  of  life. 
Whoever  indulges  in  brain-work  over  four  hours  a  day  habitu- 
ally, does  in  proportion  shorten  his  life,  or  at  least  shortens 
the  term  of  his  usefulness;  this  is  a  great  general  rule,  to 
which  there  may  be  some  exceptions  :  but  let  the  reader  take 
it  for  granted  that  he  is  not  one  of  those  exceptions ;  on  the 
contrary,  whatever  of  time  spent  in  muscular  activities,  be- 
yond the  four  hours  of  brain-work,  adds  that  much  to  the 
probabilities  of  a  longer  life,  and  a  life,  too,  of  greater  efficiency. 


BRAIN  AND   BODY  WORK. 

PHYSIOLOGISTS,  after  patient  and  close  inquiry,  have  arrived 
at  the  important  and  practical  conclusion  that  the  power  of 
the  entire  man,  his  vitality,  is  as  much  expended  by  two  hours 
of  deep  mental  effort,  as  by  a  whole  day  of  ordinary  bodily 
labor :  this  fact  seems  to  be  founded  on  observed  physiologi- 
cal laws  ;  hence,  the  man  who  spends  four  hours  in  the  twen- 
ty-four in  earnest  mental  labor,  goes  to  the  utmost  allowable 
limit  for  a  day's  work,  and  all  the  time  that  remains,  after  de- 
ducting ten  hours  for  eating,  sleeping,  and  dressing,  should  be 
conscientiously  expended  in  muscular  exercises  which  require 
no  special  brain  effort,  and  such  exercises  should  always,  by 
preference,  be  those  which  are  agreeable,  useful,  and  profita- 
ble ;  for  they  not  only  promote  the  healthful  condition  of  the 
body,  but  give  rest  to  the  brain,  which,  by  that  rest,  recuper- 
ates its  powers.  Many  can  remember,  when  turning  back  to 
their  school-days,  that  they  have  gone  to  bed  feeling  that  they 
did  not  know  their  lessons,  yet,  on  rising  in  the  morning,  the 
mind  would  run  over  them  with  a  gratifying  and  surprising 


BRAIN  AND  BODY  WORK.  723 

clearness.  It  is  this  which  accounts  for  the  observation  that 
persons  have  striven  hard  to  remember  some  important  fact, 
or  as  to  where  valuable  papers  have  been  laid,  and  towards 
morning,  when  the  mind  began  to  awake  a  little  before  the 
body,  this  being  the  time  of  dreams,  the  point  is  made  clear 
in  the  form  of  a  dream ;  thus  showing  that  rest  of  the  brain, 
whether  by  actual  sleep  or  the  passive,  comparative  rest 
which  manual  labor  affords,  gives  mental  activity,  vigor,  per- 
spicacity. From  these  it  follows  that  no  form  of  muscular  ex- 
ercise is  ignoble  in  a  student,  a  brain-worker,  which  has  to  be 
done  by  some  one,  and  by  being  done  by  him  will  save  money, 
or  will  save  the  time  of  another,  who,  perhaps,  may  already  be 
over-taxed.  How  many  servants  are  over-taxed  !  how  many 
faithful,  uncomplaining  wives  are  over-taxed  !  and  sons  and 
daughters  sometimes ;  and  clerks,  and  apprentices,  and  other 
employees.  In  every  dwelling  in  a  large  city,  there  are  many 
things  which  the  master  could  do,  which  would  reflect  benefit 
on  himself  and  others  also  ;  some  of  these  may  be  suggested : 
get  up  by  daylight,  clear  the  snow  from  the  sidewalks,  kindle 
two  or  three  fires,  ventilate  your  parlors,  keep  the  cellar  well 
swept,  split  up  kindling-wood,  after  sawing  it  yourself;  white- 
wash the  cellar  twice  a  year,  as  also  the  fencing  around  the 
back  yard  ;  trim  the  eight  or  ten  grape-vines  which  you  ought 
to  have  against  the  fence  ;  kill  off  the  worms  which  infest 
them  in  the  summer ;  root  out  the  clover  and  weeds  from  your 
grass-plot ;  keep  your  hundred  feet  of  flower-borders  in  perfect 
order  :  if  you  have  a  library,  dust  your  books,  rearrange  them 
so  that  you  may  be  able  to  put  your  hand  upon  them  in  the 
dark  if  needed;  assort  your  pamphlets  and  magazines,  so  that 
no  time  may  be  lost  should  you  want  any  of  them  in  a  hurry  ; 
in  this  way  valuable  time  may  be  saved  on  occasions  when 
you  have  no  time  to  spare :  then  pump  water  in  your  tank  for 
twenty  minutes  every  morning ;  repair  all  the  broken  glass 
yourself;  learn  how  to  keep  all  cracks  in  the  plastering  filled 
in  with  plaster  of  Paris  ;  keep  your  roof  well  painted  ;  and, 
you  great,  big,  lazy  hulk,  you,  why  mightn't  you  as  well,  when 
all  these  things  are  done,  and  you  have  any  unoccupied  time, 
help  your  wife  darn  some  of  the  basketful  of  stockings,  or  sew 
on  the  lost  buttons  of  your  boys  who  are  at  school ;  or  trim 
their  hair,  and  sew  up  the  rips  in  shoes,  and  cut  down  the  pegs 
or  tacks  in  the  inner  soles,  which  so  often  do  permanent  injury 


724  BRAIN  AND  BODY  WORK. 

to  the  feet ;  keep  their  skates  in  order  ;  have  a  grindstone  of 
your  own  and  an  iron  vice,  and  keep  all  the  knives  sharp,  and 
the  handles  tight ;  learn  how  to  mend  broken  china  and  com- 
mon delf;  to  tack  down  carpets;  to  hang  pictures;  to  take 
stains  out  of  marble  and  wood ;  to  replace  mahogany  veneer- 
ing ;  to  render  chair  legs  and  backs  firm  ;  to  keep  the  tubs  and 
barrels  hooped  up ;  learn  how  to  make  good  flour  paste,  and 
keep  some  always  on  hand,  ready  to  mend  a  torn  bank-note  or 
paste  a  useful  newspaper  scrap  in  some  appropriate  place  ;  or 
have  a  book  for  domestic  receipts,  and  when  you  see  one 
which  seems  to  be  valuable,  paste  it  in  the  book  under  its 
proper  alphabetical  head.  What  a  marvellous  help  any  hus- 
band might  be  to  his  wife  and  family  in  ways  like  these,  and 
be  saving  many  a  dollar  besides,  instead  of  lolling  about  on 
the  sofa  or  chairs ;  or,  with  feet  on  table  or  mantel,  leaning 
back  and  smoking  a  filthy  pipe  or  noisome  cigar,  or  sipping 
the  murderous  brandy  and  water,  or  vulgar  "  lager ; "  or 
wasting  time  in  pitiful  card  playing,  or  childish  checkers,  or 
chess,  or  backgammon,  or  solitaire,  or  any  other  useless,  time- 
murdering,  or  mind-dwindling  occupation :  or  take  a  good 
long  walk  after  tea,  with  yourself,  wife,  and  children,  to  some 
profitable  lecture,  to  some  prayer-meeting,  or  other  useful  as- 
semblage of  the  good,  keeping  diligently  away  from  the  thea- 
tre, the  dance,  and  the  club-house,  —  all  three  the  equal  de- 
stroyers of  social  purity,  of  domestic  happiness,  and  family  ele- 
vation. Fathers,  mothers,  husbands,  wives,  think  of  these 
things,  and  be  encouraged  to  do  them,  by  the  reflection  that 
the  author  has  been  practising  thus  for  many  years,  and  keeps 
young  and  thrives  upon  the  same,  in  physical  well-being,  and 
is  as  lively  as  a  cricket,  and  lithe  as  a  lark,  while  all  his  col- 
lege contemporaries  have  grown  old,  and  gouty,  and  string- 
halt,  and  stiff,  or  have  laid  down  to  rest  in  the  peaceful  grave  ; 
he  the  only  one  of  all  his  class  who  stands  in  his  lot  fit  for  the 
duty  of  one  man,  and  doing  that  of  three.  But  who  knows 
how  soon  it  will  be  all  over?  Next  year  —  next  week  —  to- 
morrow !  for  w  we  are  all  as  a  vapor  that  appeareth  for  a  little 
while,  then  vanisheth  away,"  —  such  shadows  we  are,  such 
shadows  we  pursue. 


THE  DRUNKARD.  725 


THE    DRUNKARD. 

VERY  few  persons  would  be  willing  to  marry  an  habitual 
drunkard  ;  but  it  is  not  generally  known  what  a  great  risk  is 
run  in  marrying  the  son  or  daughter  of  an  habitual  drunkard, 
although  they  themselves  are  strictly  temperate  from  high 
moral  principle  ;  indeed,  it  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  to  find 
the  children  of  beastly  drunkards  the  very  models  of  temper- 
ance, from  having  had  before  their  own  eyes,  for  years  in  suc- 
cession, the  terrible  evils  of  habitual  inebriation. 

It  is  one  of  the  indisputable  facts  in  physiology,  and  the 
observations  of  intelligent  men  confirm  the  truth,  that  certain 
diseases  and  taints  of  body,  and  traits  of  mind,  are  transmitted 
from  father  to  son.  So  well  and  firmly  is  this  impression 
fixed  on  the  minds  of  men,  that  when  a  man  becomes  insane, 
one  of  the  very  first  efforts  is  to  endeavor  to  ascertain  if  it  is 
not  "  in  the  family,"  and  it  is  comparatively  seldom  that  such 
is  not  proved  to  be  the  case. 

Another  important  fact  is,  that  hereditary  traits  and  taints 
sometimes  overleap  a  generation ;  arising  most  probably  from 
the  fact  that  one  parent  has  extraordinary  good  health,  suffi- 
ciently vigorous  to  stave  off  the  malady  for  a  time  ;  but  the 
seed  of  the  malady  is  in  the  immediate  descendant  for  all  that, 
and  to  the  extent,  that  if  the  grandchild  marries  one  who  has 
a  similar  taint,  the  offspring  develops  the  characteristic  of  the 
grandparent. 

Drunkenness  is  a  transmissible  malady,  because  anatomical 
investigations  demonstrate  that  the  brain  of  a  drunkard,  after  a 
comparatively  few  indulgences,  becomes  organically  impaired; 
and  when  that  is  the  case,  it  is  just  as  impossible  to  repair  the 
injury  as  to  have  a  new  finger  grow  in  the  place  of  one  whicli 
has  been  removed.  Surely  no  stronger  appeal  can  be  made 
to  a  man's  intelligence,  to  his  honor,  and  to  his  humanity,  to 
practise  temperance  in  the  use  of  all  intoxicating  drinks. 

As  a  proof  of  the  argument  made,  it  may  be  sufficient  to  say, 
in  general  terms,  that  observation  shows,  that,  in  any  number 
of  drunkards,  about  one  third  become  so  through  social  influ- 
ences, the  remaining  two  thirds  from  hereditary  influences. 
More  than  half  of  the  first  class  are  reclaimed,  but  to  recover 


726  SOW  TO  REPROVE. 

men  from  intemperate  habits,  who  have  become  so  from  hered- 
itary influences,  is  almost  impossible,  even  although  they  may 
have  had  a  Christian  education  and  the  early  instilment  of 
strictly  temperance  principles.  Let  the  reader  who  can,  thank 
God  that  he  has  not  had  the  curse  of  an  intemperate  parent, 
and  let  him  pray  daily,  with  consistent  action,  that  he  may 
never  be  permitted  to  fall  into  so  great  a  crime  as  that  of 
being  an  intemperate  parent  himself.  Nor  ought  a  man  who 
has  been  a  drunkard  to  allow  himself  to  marry  and  become 
the  father  of  children,  for  they  are  very  certain  either  to  in- 
herit his  vice,  or  to  have  implanted  in  their  constitutions  the 
seeds  of  insidious  diseases.  To  be  safe  from  these  calamities 
and  crimes  there  is  only  one  safe  plan,  —  never  taste  a  drop 
of  the  accursed  thing. 


HOW  TO   REPROVE. 

IT  requires  two  accomplished  and  cultivated  persons  to  give 
and  take  reproof,  a  loving  heart  and  a  noble  nature,  illustrated 
in  the  following  incident.  A  nobleman  had  stopped  at  a  bish- 
op's residence,  and  won  the  good  will  of  his  host  by  his  court- 
ly address  ;  but  he  had  one  bad  habit,  of  which  the  bishop 
thought  he  should  be  informed,  "  lest  it  might  be  to  his  preju- 
dice." Sending  a  trusty  servant  with  him  when  he  resumed 
his  journey,  he  bade  him,  at  the  right  moment,  to  give  his 
friendly  warning.  It  was  this:  "he  had  found  nothing  that 
was  not  highly  commendable  and  agreeable,  except  an  ugly 
motion  of  the  mouth  and  lips  when  eating,  accompanied  with 
a  noise  very  disagreeable  to  hear."  The  count,  ignorant  of  his 
bad  habit,  blushed,  but  like  a  brave  man,  replied,  "  Tell  the 
bishop  that  if  all  the  gifts  which  men  make  to  one  another 
were  like  his,  men  would  be  much  richer  than  they  are.  For 
his  great  courtesy  and  liberality  to  me,  I  return  him  infinite 
thanks,  and  assure  him  that  I  will  hereafter  guard  against  my 
evirtlabit.  God  go  with  you." 


SMOKING.  727 


SMOKING. 

ONE  of  the  most  stupid,  contemptible,  and  filthy  sights  in 
our  eye,  is  to  see  a  grown-up  man  stuck  behind  a  cigar,  or 
dirtier  pipe,  spending  whole  hours  in  drawing  smoke  into 
his  mouth  and  then  puffing  it  out,  sleepily  gazing  up  at  its 
curling  wreaths  as  if  there  was  something  entrancing  in  the 
sight.  When  we  take  into  account  the  useless  expense,  the 
bootless  trouble,  and  the  beastly  scattering  about  of  the  noi- 
some saliva  incident  to  the  habit,  the  wonder  is  that  any  man 
of  intelligence  should  cultivate  the  despicable  slavery  —  such 
a  relentless  despotism :  that  it  is  so,  no  one  can  deny,  for  if  an 
habitual  smoker  has  not  his  cigar  at  the  accustomed  time,  he 
is  literally  miserable,  and  by  his  peevishness,  fretfulness,  and 
irritability,  makes  all  around  him  as  uncomfortable  as  himself. 
Suppose  he  is  to  go  on  a  journey,  the  overshadowing  thought 
of  his  heart,  —  his  first,  his  middle,  and  his  last  concern  — is, 
that  he  does  not  leave  without  a  full  supply  of  his  dearly- 
beloved  cigar  ;  and  if  by  any  means  it  should  be  left  or  lost, 
he  is  one  of  the  most  miserable  of  men.  Shame  on  the  intelli- 
gence that  cannot  summon  courage  to  break  such  a  chain,  on 
the  instant,  into  ten  thousand  atoms.  A  tobacco-smoker,  with- 
out hife  pipe,  is  no  man  at  all ;  he  is  not  himself,  and  the  mis- 
erable habit  grows  on  him,  day  by  day,  until  at  length  he  is 
only  human  or  humane  when  he  has  a  pipe  in  his  lips.  He 
can't  drive  his  horse  without  a  cigar  in  his  mouth ;  he  can't 
make  a  trade  unless  he  is  smoking.  What  cares  he  for  the 
convenience  and  comfort  of  others  ;  what  for  the  respect  due 
to  ladies?  Why,  rather  than  not  smoke  he  would  drive  a 
dozen  people  from  an  omnibus,  or  half  a  hundred  from  a  rail- 
road car  !  There  he  goes,  strutting  along  the  street,  brushing 
by  ladies,  and  allowing  the  filthy  fumes  to  dash  against  their 
faces,  —  fumes  made  more  filthy  from  having  gathered  worse 
odors  from  his  rotten  teeth  and  the  slimy  saliva  which  is  plas- 
tered over  his  inner  cheeks.  The  next  thing  is  to  spit  on  the 
sidewalk,  and  have  it  wiped  up  by  the  dress  of  some  unfortu- 
nate passer-by.  But  what  cares  a  smoker  for  considerations 
like  these  ?  Only  give  him  a  smoke,  and  all  else  is  as  nothing 
to  him :  so  supreme  is  he  in  his  selfishness,  that  respect,  gal- 
lantry, good  feeling,  all  are  lost. 


728  DESTRUCTIVE  AGENCIES. 

It  so  happens  that  the  two  men  who  fill  the  most  important 
stations,  in  their  line,  in  the  civilized  world,  are  helpless  slaves 
to  the  miserable  practice.  The  Emperor  of  the  French  was 
dying  of  the  habit  of  smoking  seventeen  cigars  a  day,  and  was 
compelled,  by  imperative  medical  authority,  to  cut  it  down  to 
seven ;  and  about  the  same  time  our  own  President  had  to 
curtail  his  indulgence  in  the  same  direction,  or  imperil  a  na- 
tion's interests.  Reader,  are  you  a  smoker?  Then  you  are 
literally  and  unmistakably  a  fool  —  there  is  no  use  in  playing 
the  courtier  here  —  as  long  as  you  are  a  slave  to  the  pipe  and 
to  the  cigar ;  for  you  are  a  voluntary  slave  to  a  useless,  ex- 
pensive, filthy,  and  hurtful  habit.  Is  it  not  a  folly  to  prefer 
slavery  to  freedom,  and  that  a  disgusting  slavery  ? 


DESTRUCTIVE  AGENCIES. 

NEARLY  one  fourth  of  all  the  deaths  in  Massachusetts  dur- 
ing eighteen  hundred  and  fifty,  were  from  consumption :  the 
next  greatest  destroyer  was  dysentery,  commonly  called 
bloody  flux.  Consumption  is  seated  in  the  lungs ;  dysentery  is 
located  about  that  portion  of  the  bowels  immediately  under 
the  stomach.  Cough  is  the  most  universally  observed  symp- 
tom in  consumption ;  passing  blood  is  the  inseparable  attend- 
ant of  dysentery.  The  spark  which  kindles  up  consumptive 
diseases  is  sudden  changes  in  the  temperature  of  the  body 
from  a  heat  above  what  is  natural  to  one  that  is  below.  The 
most  universal  cause  of  dysentery  is  the  breathing  of  a  bad 
air  between  sunset  and  breakfast-time  in  warm  weather. 

The  practical  knowledge  of  these  things,  a  possible  and  wise 
avoidance  of  them,  would  sweep  from  the  list  of  human  mala- 
dies the  two  deadliest  of  all  diseases  known  to  civilized  life  ; 
and  yet,  not  one  in  a  dozen  can  be  induced  to  wisely  guard 
against  cooling  off  too  soon  after  exercise,  or  to  avoid  the 
breathing  of  an  unwholesome  atmosphere  in  warm  weather, 
especially  in  August  and  September,  with  their  hot  days  and 
cool  nights.  The  result  of  this  ignorance  and  inattention  is, 
that  the  average  of  human  life  in  the  most  intelligent  State  in 
the  Union,  and  the  thriftiest,  does  not  exceed  twenty-eight 
years,  when  it  ought  to  exceed  "  threescore  and  ten ! " 


LAW  OF  LOVE.  729 


LAW  OF  LOVE. 

SAID  an  old  man,  one  day,  "  When  I  look  back  over  the  long 
pilgrimage  of  an  eventful  and  not  unsuccessful  life,  I  can  con- 
fidently say  that  I  never  did  a  kindness  to  any  human  being 
without  finding  myself  the  happier  for  it  afterwards.  A  single 
friendly  act,  cheerfully,  pleasantly,  and  promptly  done  to  a 
fellow-creature  in  trouble  or  difficulty,  besides  the  good  to 
him,  has  before  now  thrown  a  streak  of  sunshine  into  my  heart 
for  the  remainder  of  the  day,  which  I  would  not  have  taken  a 
twenty-dollar  bank  note  for." 

If  such  acts  of  thoughtfulness  and  consideration  and  humane 
sympathy  were  performed  as  we  "  have  opportunity,"  the  same 
'"  streak  of  sunshine,"  the  same  lightening  up  of  the  load  of 
life,  would  come  to  both  giver  and  receiver,  until  after  a  while 
there  would  be  sunshine  all  the  time  within  us  and  without, 
dispersing  physical  as  well  as  moral  miasms,  purifying  the 
social  and  domestic  atmosphere,  warming  the  heart  to  still 
higher  sympathies,  and  waking  up  the  whole  man  to  those 
activities  which  can  never  fail  to  preserve,  maintain,  and  per- 
petuate mental,  moral,  and  physical  health,  to  a  serene  old  age. 
These  things  are  to  be  done  at  home  and  abroad,  at  the  family 
table,  the  fireside,  in  the  street,  on  the  highway,  in  town,  in 
country,  by  day  and  by  night,  always  and  everywhere,  kindly 
and  cheerily,  whenever  there  is  "  opportunity  ;  "  to  be  done  to 
the  old  and  the  young,  to  the  rich  and  the  poor,  to  the  sick 
and  the  well,  to  the  successful  and  the  unfortunate,  to  stran- 
ger and  acquaintance,  to  man  and  woman,  enemy  and  friend, 
to  everybody  and  to  everything  that  breathes  the  breath  of 
life.  These  sunlight-giving  kindnesses  can  be  done  in  mul- 
titudes of  cases  by  a  word,  a  smile,  a  look.  And  these  cost  so 
little,  why  should  they  not  be  thrown  broadcast  over  the  whole 
surface  of  humanity  in  princely  profusion,  blessing  as  they  do 
the  giver  as  well  as  receiver,  giving  gladness  to  both,  and  a 
quiet  peace  which  gold  could  never  purchase,  which  diamonds 
of  the  purest  water  and  gems  of  richest  hue  could  not  secure 
for  the  briefest  hour  ?  Men,  women,  children,  all  wake  up 
from  this  good  hour,  and  make  the  "  law  of  love  "  to  all  of 
human  kind  the  polesta,r  of  life,  the  work,  the  pleasure  of  your 


730  CHILDREN'S  FEET. 

human  existence ;  and  in  that  triumphant  hour  when  you  shall 
be  called  to  close  your  eyes  on  all  things  earthly,  and  open 
them  on  the  realities  of  an  eternal  existence,  the  first  sound 
that  shall  fall  upon  your  delighted  ear  from  the  heavenly  shore 
will  come  from  the  King  in  his  beauty,  when  he  shall  say, 
"  Ye  did  it  unto  me.  Well  done  !  " 


CHILDREN'S  FEET. 

LIFE-LONG  discomfort,  disease,  and  sudden  death  often  come 
to  children  through  the  inattention,  ignorance,  or  carelessness 
of  the  parents.  A  child  should  never  be  allowed  to  go  to  sleep 
with  cold  feet :  the  thing  to  be  last  attended  to,  in  putting  a 
child  to  bed,  should  be  to  see  that  the  feet  are  dry  and  warm  ; 
neglect  of  this  has  often  resulted  in  a  dangerous  attack  of 
croup,  diphtheria,  or  fatal  sore  throat. 

Always,  on  coming  from  school,  on  entering  the  house  from 
a  visit  or  errand  in  rainy,  muddy,  or  thawy  weather,  the  child's 
shoes  should  be  removed,  and  the  mother  should  herself  ascer- 
tain if  the  stockings  are  the  least  damp ;  and  if  so,  should  re- 
quire them  to  be  taken  off,  the  feet  held  before  the  fire  and 
rubbed  with  the  hand  until  perfectly  dry,  and  another  pair  of 
stockings  be  put  on,  and  another  pair  of  shoes,  while  the  other 
stockings  and  shoes  should  be  placed  where  they  can  be  well 
dried,  so  as  to  be  ready  for  future  use  at  a  moment's  notice. 

There  are  children,  not  ten  years  of  age,  suffering  with 
corns  from  too  close-fitting  shoes,  by  the  parent  having  been 
tempted  to  take  them  because  a  few  cents  were  deducted 
from  the  price,  while  the  child's  foot  is  constantly  growing. 
A  shoe  large  enough  with  thin  stockings,  is  too  small  on  the 
approach  of  cold  weather  and  thicker  hose,  but  the  considera- 
tion that  they  are  only  half  worn  is  sufficient  sometimes  to  re- 
quire them  to  be  worn,  with  the  result  of  a  corn,  which  is  to 
be  more  or  less  of  a  trouble  for  fifty  years  perhaps ;  and  all 
this  to  save  the  price  of  a  pair  of  half-worn  shoes  !  No  child 
should  be  fitted  with  shoes  without  putting  on  two  pair  of 
thick  woollen  stockings,  and  the  shoe  should  go  on  moderately 
easy,  even  over  these.  Have  broad  heels,  and  less  than  half 
an  inch  in  thickness. 


NUTS  AND   CHEESE.  731 

Tight  shoes  inevitably  arrest  the  free  circulation  of  the 
blood  and  nervous  influences  through  the  feet,  and  directly 
tend  to  cause  cold  feet ;  and  health,  with  habitually  cold  feet, 
is  an  impossibility. 

That  parent  is  guilty  of  a  criminal  negligence  who  does  not 
always  see  to  it  that  each  child  enters  the  church  and  school- 
house  door  with  feet  comfortably  dry  and  warm.  Grown  per- 
sons of  very  limited  intelligence  know  that,  as  to  themselves, 
damp  feet  endanger  health  and  life,  however  robust;  much 
more  so  must  it  be  to  the  tender  constitution  of  a  growing  child. 

I  have  never  known  a  shoemaker,  whether  in  sending  home 
a  pair  of  new  shoes  or  old  ones  repaired,  to  fail  leaving  several 
pegs  or  iron  nails  to  project  through  the  sole  on  the  inside. 
The  result  is,  that  often  in  a  single  day,  —  the  excitement  of 
play  preventing  a  child  from  noticing  any  discomfort,  —  the 
stockings  are  cut  through  in  several  places,  and  ugly  sores  are 
made  in  the  soles  of  the  feet,  to-be  an  annoyance  and  a  trouble 
for  a  week  afterwards ;  besides  the  unnecessary  work  given  to 
an  already  overtasked  mother  in  mending  the  stockings.  To 
avoid  the  results  of  such  inexcusable  neglect,  and  also  to  make 
it  more  sure  that  pegs  and  nails  should  not  work  through,  by 
the  shrinkage  of  the  leather,  and  also  to  keep  the  feet  dry,  there 
should  be  worn,  between  the  leather  of  the  shoe  and  the  stock- 
ing, a  piece  of  cork,  or  soft,  thick  pasteboard,  lined  at  the  bot- 
tom with  a  piece  of  oiled  silk ;  and  on  the  upper  side,  touch- 
ing the  stocking,  the  lining  should  be  of  Canton  flannel ;  each 
person  should  have  two  pairs  of  these,  to  be  worn  on  alternate 
days. 


NUTS  AND   CHEESE. 

NUTS  and  cheese  promote  digestion,  as  a  general  rule ;  the 
conditions  being  that  the  nuts  should  be  ripe  and  the  cheese 
old,  both  to  be  eaten  at  the  close  of  dinner ;  the  digesting 
agent  in  both  is  a  peculiar  oil  which  has  the  property  of  act- 
ing chemically  on  what  has  been  eaten,  and  thus  preparing  it 
for  being  the  more  easily  appropriated  to  the  purposes  of  nu- 
trition. Many  think  that  the  more  solid  portions  of  the  nut 
should  not  be  swallowed.  This  is  an  error  :  those  particles  of 
solid  matter  are  not  digested,  it  is  true,  but  they  are  passed 


732  CHARMS. 

through  the  system  unchanged,  and  act  as  a  mechanical  stim- 
ulant to  the  action  of  the  internal  organs,  as  white  mustard- 
seed,  swallowed  whole,  are  known  to  do ;  thus  preventing  that 
constipated  condition  of  the  system,  which  is  so  invariably 
productive  of  numerous  bodily  discomforts,  and  dangerous 
and  even  fatal  forms  of  disease. 


CHARMS. 

EVEN  in  these  late  ages  the  horseshoe  is  not  unfrequently 
seen  nailed  over  the  door  of  the  cabin  or  cottage,  to  "  charm  " 
away  misfortune,  or  to  w  keep  off"  disease.  There  are  intelli- 
gent men  who  have  carried  a  buckeye  in  their  "  unmentiona- 
bles "  pockets  for  years,  to  "keep  off"  piles  !  Children  can 
be  found  at  school,  any  day,  with  little  bags  of  brimstone  at- 
tached to  their  necks  by  a  string,  to  "  keep  off"  some  particu- 
lar malady.  There  are  many  young  gentlemen  and  ladies 
who  have  half  a  dozen  "  charms  "  attached  to  their  watch 
chains,  it  being  a  remnant  of  the  ancient  superstition.  We 
give  a  pitying  smile  at  the  mention  of  these  absurdities,  for 
we  know  them  to  be  unavailing.  But  there  are  "  charms " 
against  human  ills  which  are  powerful  to  save  from  physical, 
mental,  and  moral  calamity. 

Bearing  about  in  one's  heart  the  sweet  memories  of  a  moth- 
er's care,  and  affection,  and  fidelity,  often  has  a  resistless 
power,  for  many  a  year  after  that  dear  mother  has  found  her 
resting-place  in  heaven,  to  restrain  the  wayward  and  the  un- 
settled from  rushing  into  the  ways  of  wicked  and  abandoned 
men.  John  Randolph  of  Roanoke  used  to  repeat,  in  his  later 
years,  and  always  with  quivering  lips,  that  while  he  was  a 
young  man,  in  Paris,  he  was  repeatedly  on  the  point  of  plun- 
ging recklessly  into  the  French  infidelity  which  was  so  preva- 
lent during  the  terrible  "  Revolution  "  of  the  time  ;  but  was  as 
often  restrained  by  the  remembrance  of  that  far-distant  time, 
when  yet  in  his  infancy,  his  mother  used  to  have  him  bend  his 
knees  before  her,  and,  with  his  little  hands  in  hers,  taught  him, 
in  sweet  but  tremulous  tones,  to  say,  nightly,  "  Our  Father, 
who  art,"  <fec. 

A  Scotch  mother,  when  her  son,  a  lad  of  sixteen,  was  just 


THE  MOTHER.  733 

about  leaving  for  America,  and  she  had  no  hope  that  she 
should  ever  meet  him  again,  said  to  him,  K  Promise  me,  my 
son,  that  you  will  always  respect  the  Sabbath  day."  "  I  will," 
said  he.  His  first  employer,  in  New  York,  dismissed  him 
because  he  refused  to  work  on  Sunday.  But  he  soon  found 
other  employment,  and  is  now  a  very  rich  man,  an  exemplary 
Christian,  and  an  influential  citizen. 

Tens  of  thousands  are  there,  in  this  wide  land,  who,  by  the 
"  charm  "  of  the  temperance  pledge,  have  gone  out  into  the 
world,  singly  and  alone,  to  battle  with  its  snares,  and  tempta- 
tions, and  sin;  they  have  been  surrounded,  at  every  step,  by 
the  great  tempter,  with  the  allurements  of  passion  and  pride, 
of  sensual  gratifications  and  of  corrupting  associations ;  but 
keeping  their  eye  steadily  fixed  on  the  beautiful  "  pledge,"  — 
to  "  touch  not,  taste  not "  the  accursed  thing. —  they  have 
bravely  come  off  conquerors,  and  to-day  stand  in  their  might, 
the  pillars  of  society.  Young  gentlemen,  and  young  ladies, 
too,  make  it  your  ambition  to  bear  about  with  you,  always,  the 
"  charm  "  of  the  pledge  of  reverence  for  the  Sabbath  day,  and 
the  holy  memories  of  a  sainted  mother's  religious  teachings, 
and  you  will  pass  safely  to  a  ripe  old  age  of  happiness  and 
health. 


THE    MOTHER. 

IT  has  been  truly  said,  the  first  being  that  rushes  to  the 
recollection  of  a  soldier  or  a  sailor,  in  his  heart's  difficulty,  is 
his  mother.  She  clings  to  his  memory  and  his  affection  in 
the  midst  of  all  forgetfulness  and  hardihood  induced  by  a  rov- 
ing life.  The  last  message  he  leaves  is  for  her,  his  last  whis- 
per breathes  her  name.  The  mother,  as  she  instills  the  lesson 
of  piety  and  filial  obligation  into  the  heart  of  her  infant  son, 
should  always  feel  that  her  labor  is  not  in  vain.  She  may 
drop  into  the  grave,  but  she  has  left  behind  her  influences 
that  will  work  for  her.  The  bow  is  broken,  but  the  arrow  is 
sped,  and  will  do  its  office. 


734  WEATHER  AND   WEALTH. 


WEATHER  AND   WEALTH. 

"  WHAT  has  the  weather  to  do  with  business  ? "  was  the 
reply  of  a  cheery-faced  and  successful  business  man,  to  the  in- 
quiry, "  Are  you  out  such  a  day  as  this,  ?  "  Such  an  hour  of 
sleet,  and  storm,  and  angry,  howling  winds,  is  seldom  seen  in 
these  latitudes.  It  was  approaching  three  o'clock,  and  the 
bank  account  had  to  be  made  right,  or  financial  ruin  would 
have  been  the  result.  Suppose  the  storm  had  been  ten  times 
more  tempestuous,  the  wind  ten  times  more  boisterous,  the 
cold  twenty  degrees  below  zero,  the  City  Hall  clock  would 
have  struck  three  just  as  soon,  and  the  bank  notary  would  not 
have  delayed  one  second  later  to  have  written  the  fatal  word, 
"  protested  ;  "  for  business  knows  no  law  but  that  of  prompti- 
tude ;  it  knows  no  excuse  ;  death,  even,  is  no  apology  for  the 
failure  to  meet  a  bank  engagement.  He  who  will  succeed  in 
making  a  fortune  in  a  large  city,  must  meet  his  engagements 
in  all  weathers. 

It  is  precisely  so  in  relation  to  health  and  disease.  Moder- 
ate, daily  exercise,  in  the  open  air,  with  a  cheerful  spirit,  and 
an  encouraging  remuneration,  is  worth  a  thousand  times  more 
than  all  the  remedies  in  the  materia  medico,  for  the  removal  of 
ordinary  ailments,  when  conjoined  with  temperance  and  clean- 
liness. But  the  same  principle  must  be  applied  as  in  the  suc- 
cessful prosecution  of  business.  The  exercise  must  be  per- 
formed regardless  of  the  weather.  Not  that  exercise  in  bad 
weather  is  especially  promotive  to  health ;  it  is  not  as  favora- 
ble to  that  end  as  good  weather.  But  if  exercise  is  needed  at 
all,  it  is  not  the  less  necessary  because  it  is  raining,  or  very 
cold,  or  unendurably  hot.  If  a  man  is  hungry,  he  is  not  the 
less  hungry  because  he  can  get  nothing  to  eat.  The  necessi- 
ty for  exercise  as  a  means  of  health  is  abiding ;  what  makes 
the  rule  imperative,  "  Go  out  in  all  weathers,"  is,  that  we  eat 
in  all  weathers;  and  if  we  exercise  only  when  the  weather  is 
perfectly  suitable,  half  the  time  would  be  lost  in  our  chan- 
ging climate.  But  the  very  energy  and  moral  courage  which 
enable  a  man  to  take  out-door  exercise,  regardless  of  the 
weather,  are  of  themselves  potent  means  for  the  cure  even  of 
serious  diseases. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EATING.  735 

The  man  who  offers  bad  weather  as  an  excuse  for  not  going 
and  paying  a  debt,  will  never  succeed  in  business  ;  nor  will  he 
get  well,  who,  for  that  reason,  fails  to  take  his  daily  exercise, 
when  it  is  an  indispensable  means  of  cure.  It  is  precisely  the 
same  in  religion ;  he  who  is  swift  to  offer  bad  weather  as  an 
excuse  for  being  absent  from  the  worship  of  the  great  congre- 
gation on  the  Sabbath  day,  or  from  other  properly  appointed 
"  means  of  grace,"  never  did  make  an  efficient  church-member, 
will  have  nothing  "  added  "  in  his  napkin  at  the  great  account- 
ing day  !  It  is  the  man  who  is  faithful  to  his  duty  always, 
"  regardless  of  the  weather,"  or  anything  else,  who  will  hear 
the  glad  greeting  from  the  Heavenly  Judge,  "  Well  done  I " 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EATING. 

THE  young  eat  for  three  reasons.  1st.  To  grow.  2d.  To 
keep  warm.  3d.  To  repair  waste.  Adults  eat  for  the  last 
two  purposes  ;  hence  all  food  contains  one  of  two  elements, 
and  some  kinds  both,  called  nitrogen  and  carbon.  The  nitro- 
gen makes  flesh,  sometimes  called  muscle,  and  is  the  same  as 
lean  meat.  Carbon  makes  the  fat,  and  is  that  which  keeps  us 
warm.  Sugar,  starch,  arrowroot,  oil,  butter,  suet,  and  lard 
have  no  nitrogen ;  there  is  nothing  in  them  to  make  flesh  out 
of;  all  the  nutriment  they  afford  is  carbon,  the  material  for 
warmth.  Infants  and  young  children  would  soon  die,  would 
get  so  chilly  as  to  freeze,  as  it  were,  unless  they  had  some- 
thing sweet  in  their  food ;  hence  nature  has  implanted  in  them 
an  unappeasable  taste  for  sweet  things.  The  thing  the  new- 
born infant  needs,  first  and  always,  is  warmth.  Butter,  oils, 
and  starches  abound  also  in  the  heat-producing  elements,  but 
they  require  strong  powers  of  digestion,  are  applicable  to 
grown-up  persons  and  to  the  old ;  hence,  as  we  grow  old,  we 
like  fat  meats,  oils,  and  butter  more. 

It  is  in  obedience  to  these  laws  that  Almighty  beneficence 
and  wisdom  has  imparted  a  relish  for  oils  and  fat  meats  in 
winter,  because  extra  heat  is  needed.  Greenlanders,  whose 
country  is  always  covered  with  ice  and  snow,  consider  butter, 
and  lard,  and  tallow  candles,  and  the  rankest  oils,  the  greatest 


736  DENTISTRY. 

luxuries  conceivable.  But  rice,  on  which  many  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  warm  countries  chiefly  live,  is  said  to  contain  scarce 
one  per  cent,  of  the  fat  or  heat-producing  element,  while  oils 
have  ninety-six  per  cent,  of  it. 

All  know  how  buckwheat  cakes  are  relished  in  winter ;  but 
as  spring  comes  on,  we  begin  to  lose  our  appetite  for  them. 
The  cakes  themselves  contain  fifty-four  per  cent,  of  the  fat  or 
heat-producing  element,  and  they  are  made  more  palatable  by 
spreading  butter  on  them,  and  adding  to  this  molasses,  each 
being  almost  entirely  (ninety-six  per  cent.)  heat-producing. 

But  out-door  workers  eat  meat  and  bread  the  year  round, 
and  never  weary  of  it,  because  twenty-two  per  cent,  of  them 
are  flesh-forming,  and  give  that  much  power  and  strength 
to  work. 


DENTISTRY. 

GOOD  teeth,  good  looks,  and  good  health,  are  inseparable. 
Ill  health  destroys  the  teeth ;  unless  food  is  chewed  well,  the 
horrors  of  a  life-long  dyspeptic  are  inevitable.  The  hand- 
somest face  in  the  world  is  marred,  fatally  marred,  by  a  snag- 
gled  tooth.  The  time  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a  set  of  sound, 
solid  teeth,  is  when  the  child  first  begins  to  eat  bread.  The 
finest  set  of  teeth  I  ever  saw  in  mortal  man,  induced  me  to 
stop  the  stranger,  and  ask  him  if  they  were  natural,  and  how 
he  accounted  for  their  perfection  of  beauty  :  he  was  forty-five 
years  of  age  —  not  one  missing,  not  one  irregular,  not  one 
discolored,  and  so  beautifully  white  that  the  sight  was  charm- 
ing. He  said  he  had  thought  on  the  subject  a  great  deal,  es- 
pecially as  all  the  younger  members  of  the  family  had  very 
poor  teeth  ;  and  he  had  settled  it  in  his  own  mind  that  it  was 
the  secret  of  his  father  being  so  very  poor  when  he  first  mar- 
ried, and  for  several  years  afterwards,  that,  living  in  an  out- 
of-a-way  place,  they  used  a  bread  of  corn,  or  wheat,  or  rye,  as 
they  could  get  it,  rudely  pounded  into  a  very  coarse  meal.  At 
the  end  of  the  first  few  years  his  father  got  a  little  ahead  in 
the  world,  and  the  younger  children  were  all  brought  up  as  he 
was,  except  that  they  had  the  regular  bread  made  of  the  com- 


DENTISTRY.  737 

mon  flour  and  meal ;  hence  he  could  come  to  no  other  conclu- 
sion, than  that  the  beauty  of  his  teeth  was  owing  to  the  quali- 
ty of  bread  eaten. 

Scientific  men,  within  the  last  few  years,  have  come  to  a 
similar  conclusion,  and  have  solved  the  mystery  with  as  much 
clearness,  perhaps,  as  can  be  vouchsafed  to  questions  of  that 
kind. 

Of  the  body  of  a  tooth,  seventy-one  parts,  nearly  three 
fourths,  are  composed  of  lime,  while  of  the  enamel,  upon  the 
perfection  of  which  depends  the  safety  and  durability  of  the 
teeth,  ninety-four  parts  out  of  a  hundred  are  lime.  Hence,  the 
tooth  is  mainly  made  of  lime.  We  get  almost  our  entire  sup- 
plies of  lime  for  the  teeth  and  bones  from  the  bread  we  eat ; 
but  observe,  the  bran,  the  outer  covering  of  corn  and  wheat,  is 
separated  from  the  flour  and  meal,  and  thrown  away ;  but  fine 
flour  contains  only  thirty-five  parts  of  elements  of  bone  out  of 
five  hundred,  while  bran  contains  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  parts  of  the  element  of  bone  out  of  every  five  hundred. 
If,  then,  you  want  strong-boned  and  perfect-toothed  children, 
feed  them  on  bread  made  from  the  whole  product  of  the  grain, 
from  the  time  they  begin  to  eat  bread, — beginning,  too,  with 
the  mother,  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  a  year  before  they 
are  born. 

Many  dentists  inculcate  two  most  mischievous  errors. 
Threads  should  never  be  drawn  between  the  teeth.  A  per- 
manent tooth  ought  never  to  be  extracted  to  make  room  for 
others.  Nature  knows  what  she  is  about ;  every  tooth  is 
needed  to  develop  the  jaw,  and  that  is  of  more  importance  than 
regularity.  Soft  brushes  only  should  be  used  for  the  teeth, 
and  no  wash  except  soap-suds  twice  a  week,  and  every  night 
and  morning  the  following :  Dissolve  two  ounces  of  borax  in 
three  pints  of  boiling  water  ;  then  add  a  teaspoonful  of  spirits 
of  camphor;  keep  it  well  bottled.  A  table-spoonful  in  as 
much  warm  water  at  a  time.  Or  dip  a  brush  in  water  and  rub 
it  on  the  teeth  until  the  accumulation  of  saliva  is  sufficient. 
This  makes  the  softest,  safest,  and  most  cleansing  tooth-wash 
known. 


738  CHILDISH  BAD  HABITS. 


CHILDISH  BAD  HABITS. 

SOME  time  ago  a  child  died  under  such  circumstances  that 
the  physician  made  an  examination  after  death,  and  found  that 
the  stomach  was  ulcerated  in  various  places,  and  that  at  each 
ulcerated  spot  there  was  a  bit  of  finger-nail  stuck  into  the 
membranes.  The  symptoms  attendant  on  the  pernicious  habit 
of  girls  at  school,  particularly  of  biting  off  the  finger-nails, 
are  great  paleness  of  the  face,  and  occasional  bleeding  at  the 
nose.  When  once  a  child  gets  into  this  habit,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  break  it  up  by  verbal  admonitions,  or  even  by  pun- 
ishment ;  the  very  fact  of  its  being  forbidden,  seems  to  impel 
to  the  act  of  biting  the  nails  and  swallowing  the  particles, 
when  they  are  alone  or  unobserved.  A  very  efficient  method 
of  breaking  up  the  habit  is  to  compel  the  wearing  of  a  woollen 
mitten. 

Sometimes  young  children  get  into  the  way  of  sucking  a 
finger  or  thumb,  apparently  as  an  amusement,  or  as  a  means 
of  getting  to  sleep  :  it  is  not  known  that  any  special  ill  results 
follow  this,  except  that  it  may  cause  a  deformity  of  the  part,  by 
preventing  natural  and  healthful  growth ;  but  a  coarse  wool- 
len mitten  will  very  certainly  break  up  the  practice.  Infants 
carried  mainly  on  the  left  arm  of  the  nurse,  very  soon  get  to 
use  the  left  hand.  Whether  from  this  or  any  other  cause,  the 
the  child  is  getting  to  be  left-handed,  a  large  woollen  mitten, 
tied  to  the  wrist,  so  that  it  cannot  be  easily  removed,  will 
break  up  the  habit  in  a  short  time. 

Some  children  are  peculiarly  wayward  and  perverse,  and 
fall  into  bad  habits  imperceptibly;  and  when  once  formed, 
they  seem  to  take  satisfaction  in  keeping  them  up,  especially 
if  the  parents  remark  upon  them,  in  the  presence  of  others,  as 
a  singularity.  Children,  as  well  as  grown  persons  of  no  great 
strength  of  mind,  will  do  more  to  keep  up  the  character  of 
singularity,  if  it  is  remarked  upon,  however  undesirable  or 
unseemly  it  may  be,  than  they  would  to  break  it  up.  There 
seems  to  be  a  something  in  us  all,  more  or  less,  which  impels 
us  to  invite  attention  to  ourselves,  even  though  it  be  by  affect- 
ing disagreeable  singularities.  Many  a  child  is  confirmed  in 
stuttering  by  unwise  comments  on  it  on  the  part  of  the  parents. 


TYPHOID.  739 

When  a  child  is  observed  to  be  falling  into  any  bad  habit  or 
practice,  it  is  the  best  plan  to  devise  some  method  of  breaking 
it  up  without  calling  the  attention  to  it,  by  so  arranging  mat- 
ters that  the  habit  cannot  be  indulged  in  without  inconven- 
ience or  discomfort,  such  as  requiring  the  mittens  to  be  worn 
in  the  cases  above  named. 

Children  will  always  be  more  tractable,  and  will  be  much 
more  easily  withdrawn  from  undesirable  ways,  if  parents 
would  only  take  the  simple  precaution  of  never  speaking  of 
the  fault  in  the  presence  of  a  third  person. 


TYPHOID. 

IP  you  knock  a  man  down,  he  may  rise  up  again,  but  after 
two  or  three  such  knockings  he  loses  the  power  of  rising.  In 
ordinary  fevers  the  system  has  a  recuperative  power,  espe- 
cially when  the  weight  of  the  malady  has  been  removed  by 
suitable  medicine  ;  but  when  that  recuperative  power  is  lost, 
the  system  will  not  rise  to  health,  although  medicine  has  done 
all  that  was  expected  from  it,  and  the  patient  dies.  This  ina- 
bility may  exist  in  all  forms  of  disease.  "  Typhoid  "  means 
"  like  typhus,"  and  typhus  itself  means  "  stupor  "  —  a  kind  of 
sleep  or  death.  There  is  a  growing  tendency  in  all  diseases 
to  take  on  the  typhoid  type,  which  simply  means  that  the  con- 
stitutions of  the  people  are  growing  weaker  and  weaker,  less 
and  less  capable  of  resisting  the  onsets  of  disease  ;  hence,  a 
less  amount  of  sickness  kills  now  than  formerly  ;  and  added  to 
this,  physicians  of  every  grade  have  observed  that  their 
patients  can't  bear  as  large  doses  of  medicine  as  heretofore, 
and  the  tendency  is  to  give  less,  and  at  longer  intervals,  and 
wait  and  see  what  nature  will  do.  The  practical  use  to  be 
made  by  the  reader  of  these  facts,  is  to  habituate  himself  to  a 
greater  watchfulness  against  the  causes  of  all  disease,  and  to 
a  greater  care  of  himself  when  he  is  sick  ;  and  this  care  should 
be  observed  in  three  main  directions :  — 

1.  In  recovering  from  any  form  of  disease,  keep  abundantly 
and  comfortably  warm. 

2.  Studiously  avoid  taking  cold. 

3.  Watch  against  over-exercise  for  several  days  or  weeks. 


740  SALT  OF  TEE  EARTH. 

4.  Eat  very  moderately,  and  at  regular  intervals,  of  plain, 
nourishing  food. 

If  these  four  things  are  observed,  relapses  would  be  rare, 
and  the  patient  would  be  saved :  the  most  difficult  of  the  four 
is  to  avoid  eating  too  much  ;  there  is  special  danger  of  yield- 
ing to  a  craving  for  some  particular  kind  of  food.  We  knew 
an  estimable  lady  who  was  happily  recovering  from  an  attack 
of  typhoid  fever,  but  she  had  such  a  strong  desire  for  a  sweet 
potato  that  it  was  allowed  her ;  in  less  than  an  hour  the 
symptoms  became  unfavorable,  and  she  died  the  next  day. 

The  sleepiness  or  stupor  of  typhoid  arises  from  the  fact  that 
the  brain,  and  thence  the  whole  nervous  system,  is  oppressed 
by  the  disease ;  is  weighed  down  ;  can't  act ;  —  goes  to  sleep, 
and  dies ! 


SALT  OF  THE  EARTH. 

WITHOUT  religion,  this  planet  would  not  contain  one  solitary 
human  inhabitant  in  all  the  ages.  The  salt  of  the  sea  pre- 
serves it  from  corruption  and  unbearable  noisomeness;  it  is 
the  salt  in  the  human  body  which  prevents  physical  decay. 
It  is  the  moral  salt,  the  preservative  influences  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion,  which  upholds  social  existence,  which  sustains 
all  civilized  governments,  and  prevents  the  extinction  of  na- 
tionalities ;  and  this,  too,  is  the  preservative  influence  in  the 
individual,  which  saves  him  from  bestiality,  and  crime,  and 
degradation  ;  any  man  without  it  becomes  a  savage.  It  is  this 
which  throws  around  woman  the  halo  of  her  holiness,  and  her 
purity,  and  her  social  exaltation ;  hence  it  is  that  the  enemies 
of  religion  are  the  vipers  of  society;  they  poison,  and  corrupt, 
and  destroy  all  social  influences  for  good,  and  wherever  they 
habitate  together,  crime  and  beastliness,  in  their  most  degrad- 
ing, disgusting, and  most  horrid  forms,  reign  rampant;  society 
has  no  guarantees,  decency  is  outraged,  law  has  no  power,  and 
virtue  is  extinct. 

These  are  not  the  vagaries  of  an  excited  imagination,  for 
not  only  has  the  Divine  Master  declared  of  his  followers,  "  Ye 
are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  but  actual  facts  multiply  in  these 
later  ages,  demonstrating  the  truth  of  the  principle  ;  one  may 
be  stated  as  a  sample  of  multitudes  of  others. 


SALT  OF  THE  EARTH.  741 

Some  years  ago  a  town  was  founded  by  a  set  of  German 
infidels  ;  one  article  of  the  organization  was,  that  no  house  of 
religious  worship  should  ever  be  erected  on  the  spot.  A  few 
years  later,  a  terrible  calamity  befell  the  place,  and  as  if  the 
curse  of  Heaven  attached  itself  to  the  ill-fated  town,  a  more 
recent  incident  has  occurred  which  will  shock  humanity 
wherever  it  is  narrated.  Three  strangers  stopped  at  the 
public  house  in  the  village,  within  a  year ;  it  was  towards 
evening,  and  they  expected  to  resume  their  journey  the  next 
morning.  Without  any  adequate  cause,  they  were  set  upon 
and  beaten  in  the  most  savage  manner.  One  of  them,  not 
being  quite  dead,  yet  in  a  dying  condition,  was  taken  up  and 
hung.  These  statements  are  made  from  memory.  The  judicial 
record  brings  up  the  history  to  this  date,  ten  months  after  the 
occurrence,  in  the  language  of  an  intelligent  gentleman  on 
the  spot: — 

"  Well  might  the  judge  remark,  when  commenting  upon  the 
conduct  of  the  jury,  that  he  had  anticipated  the  strength  of 
these  influences  in  New  Ulm,  and  to  avoid  them  as  far  as 
possible,  had  removed  the  court  forty  miles  from  there,  but 
that  it  was  evident  it  had  not  been  removed  far  enough  to  get 
beyond  their  reach.  That  when  three  men  had  lost  their  lives 
by  violence,  on  the  same  day,  in  the  same  village  ;  that  when 
there  were  one  hundred  and  fifty  witnesses  to  the  killing  of 
two  of  them,  and  they  (the  Grand  Jury)  had  had  a  selection 
from  the  whole  number,  and  as  many  as  they  could  hear  the 
testimony  of  in  six  days,  and  could  yet  return,  upon  their 
oaths,  that  no  offence  had  been  committed,  or  if  any  offence, 
that  there  was  not  evidence  before  them  as  to  who  were  the 
guilty  parties,  presented  a  mournful  and  unprecedented  state 
of  things;  although  the  jury  would  never,  by  their  action, 
convince  either  court  or  people  that  no  offence  had  been  com- 
mitted, or  that  there  was  no  evidence  to  charge  anybody  with 
its  commission." 

And  but  for  the  controlling  influences  of  the  principles  of 
the  Christian  religion,  our  whole  country,  with  all  its  wealth, 
and  grandeur,  and  intellect,  would  become,  in  a  short  time, 
the  same  Pandemonium. 


742  MARRIAGE  MAXIMS. 


MARRIAGE  MAXIMS. 

A  GOOD  wife  is  the  greatest  earthly  blessing.  A  man  is 
what  his  wife  makes  him.  It  is  the  mother  who  moulds  the 
character  and  destiny  of  the  child. 

Make  marriage  a  matter  of  moral  judgment. 

Marry  in  your  own  religion. 

Marry  into  a  different  blood  and  temperament  from  your 
own. 

Marry  into  a  family  which  you  have  long  known. 

Never  talk  at  one  another,  either  alone  or  in  company. 

Never  both  manifest  anger  at  once. 

Never  speak  loud  to  one  another,  unless  the  house  is  on 
fire. 

Never  reflect  on  a  past  action,  which  was  done  with  a  good 
motive,  and  with  the  best  judgment  at  the  time. 

Let  each  one  strive  to  yield  oftenest  to  the  wishes  of  the 
other. 

Let  self-abnegation  be  the  daily  aim  and  effort  of  each. 

The  very  nearest  approach  to  domestic  felicity  on  earth  is 
in  the  mutual  cultivation  of  an  absolute  unselfishness. 

Never  find  fault  unless  it  is  perfectly  certain  that  a  fault 
has  been  committed;  and  even  then  prelude  it  with  a  kiss, 
and  lovingly. 

Never  taunt  with  a  past  mistake. 

Neglect  the  whole  world  beside,  rather  than  one  another. 

Never  allow  a  request  to  be  repeated. 

"  I  forgot  "  is  never  an  acceptable  excuse. 

Never  make  a  remark  at  the  expense  of  the  other ;  it  is  a 
meanness. 

Never  part  for  a  day  without  loving  words  to  think  of  dur- 
ing absence  ;  besides,  you  may  not  meet  again  in  life. 

They  who  marry  for  physical  characteristics  will  fail  of 
happiness ;  they  who  marry  for  traits  of  mind  and  heart  will 
never  fail  of  perennial  springs  of  domestic  enjoyment. 

They  are  safest  who  marry  from  the  stand-point  of  senti- 
ment rather  than  from  that  of  feeling,  passion,  or  mere  love. 

The  beautiful  in  heart  is  a  million  times  of  more  avail  in 
securing  domestic  enjoyment,  than  the  beautiful  in  person  or 
manners. 


RECOGNITION  HEREAFTER.  743 

Do  not  herald  the  sacrifices  you  make  to  each  others  tastes, 
habits,  or  preferences. 

Let  all  your  mutual  accommodations  be  spontaneous,  whole- 
souled,  and  free  as  air. 

A  hesitating,  tardy,  or  grura  yielding  to  the  wishes  of  the 
other,  always  grates  upon  a  loving  heart,  like  Milton's  "  gates 
on  rusty  hinges  turning." 

Whether  present  or  absent,  alone  or  in  company,  speak  up 
for  one  another,  cordially,  earnestly,  lovingly. 

If  one  is  angry,  let  the  other  part  the  lips  only  to  give  a 
kiss. 

Never  deceive,  for  the  heart  once  misled  can  never  wholly 
trust  again. 

Consult  one  another  in  all  that  comes  within  the  experience, 
and  observation,  and  sphere  of  the  other. 

Give  your  warmest  sympathies  for  each  other's  trials. 

Never  question  the  integrity,  truthfulness,  or  religiousness 
of  one  another. 

Encourage  one  another  in  all  the  depressing  circumstances 
under  which  you  may  be  placed. 

By  all  that  can  actuate  a  good  citizen,  by  all  that  can  melt 
the  heart  of  pity,  by  all  that  can  move  a  parent's  bosom,  by 
every  claim  of  a  common  humanity,  see  to  it  that  at  least  one 
party  shall  possess  strong,  robust,  vigorous  health  of  body  and 
brain ;  else  let  it  be  a  marriage  of  spirit  with  spirit ;  that 
only,  and  no  farther. 


RECOGNITION  HEREAFTER. 

WHATEVER  sentiment  of  the  mind  is  universal  may  well  be 
considered  as  an  inherent  quality  inseparable  from  it — a  part 
of  it  and  created  with  it ;  hence,  of  Divine  origin  :  else,  why 
should  Divinity,  who  is  the  very  embodiment  of  benevolence, 
incorporate  with  every  soul  brought  into  existence,  as  a  part 
of  it,  a  false  sentiment,  or  belief,  or  instinct  ? 

All  nations  of  all  ages  believe  in  an  hereafter,  and  there  is 
an  hereafter.  All  nations  of  all  ages  believe  in  a  future  state 
of  rewards  and  punishments,  and  there  is  a  future  state  of  re- 
wards and  punishments. 


744  RECOGNITION  HEREAFTER. 

All  nations  of  all  ages  have  a  sense  of  remorse  for  the  per- 
petration of  what  is  considered  as  a  wrong :  hence  there  is  a 
conscience,  which  bears  testimony  against  wrong  doing,  as 
wrong. 

All  nations  of  all  ages  have  consoled  themselves  in  the 
death  of  dear  ones,  that  they  shall  know  them  lovingly,  when 
they  meet  in  the  future  world  ;  hence  we  may  infer  that  there 
is  a  blessed  recognition  hereafter  of  all  the  good  ;  else,  how 
can  the  Beneficent  One  allow  the  creatures  of  His  power,  the 
work  of  His  hands,  the  children  of  His  love,  to  universally 
feed  on  hopes  that  can  never  be  realized ;  to  take  comfort  in 
anticipations  which  can  have  no  existence  ?  Will  He,  who  is 
the  personification  of  "  love "  itself,  thus  mock  the  crushing 
grief  of  those  whom  he  made  in  His  own  image  ?  How  can 
it  be? 

w  I  shall  go  to  him,  but  he  shall  not  return  to  me,"  said  King 
David,  when  he  would  comfort  himself  for  the  death  of  his 
darling  child.  Such  a  speech  would  be  the  merest  nonsense, 
if,  when  David  went  to  him  in  heaven,  he  would  not  recog- 
nize him  from  any  other  angel-children  there.  Certainly  we 
shall  not  know  less  in  heaven  than  we  do  here.  One  of  the 
greatest  delights  in  any  society  or  company  is  the  personal 
knowledge  of  those  who  are  present.  Well  may  we  suppose 
that  next  to  the  thrill  of  bliss  which  shall  sweep  across  the 
soul  at  the  first  sight  of  the  blessed  Saviour  in  paradise,  will 
be  the  joy  unutterable  of  finding  the  loved  ones  of  earth  there, 
safe  ;  forever  safe  —  and  happy  too  1 

"  Friends,  e'en  in  heaven,  one  happiness  would  miss, 
Should  they  not  know  each  other  when  in  bliss." 

'  *  Memory  cannot  die  ;  otherwise  the  soul  would  lose  its  iden- 
tity ;  because  our  experiences  are  a  part  of  ourselves.  And 
it  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  terrestrial  experiences  of  the 
soul  shall  become  a  blank  in  heaven  —  shall  be  forever  blotted 
out ;  for  surely  it  will  heighten  the  bliss  of  immortality  to 
compare  the  dangers,  and  toils,  and  sins  of  earth,  with  the 
safety,  and  rest,  and  holiness  of  heaven  ! 

Paul  said  to  the  Hebrew  church,  the  converted  Jews,  that 
angels  were  the  "ministering  spirits,"  waiters,  guards,  care- 
takers of  God's  people  in  this  world  —  their  helpers  towards 
heaven  ;  and  certainly  they  will  continue  to  know  us  when  we 


POISONOUS  MOULDS.  745 

get  there ;  and  will  it  not  heighten  the  gladness  of  the  meet- 
ing, that  we  shall  intuitively  know  them  as  our  friendly  at- 
tendants in  the  world  we  have  left  far  below  ?  just  as  Peter, 
James,  and  John,  in  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration,  intuitively 
knew,  without  an  introduction,  that  it  was  Moses  and  Elias 
who  talked  with  the  Saviour  ?  The  w  rich  man  "  in  Tophet 
recognized  Lazarus,  and  knew  Abraham,  intuitively ;  for  as 
soon  as  he  saw  him  he  spoke  to  him,  calling  his  name. 

If  there  be  no  recognition  hereafter,  whence  the  universal 
desire,  and  hope,  and  longing  to  be  buried  with  the  departed 
—  an  idea  so  touchingly  presented  by  Mrs.  Sigourney  of  a  dy- 
ing child  ?  — 

"  One  only  wish  she  uttered, 

While  life  was  ebbing  fast : 
'  Sleep  by  my  side,  dear  mother, 

And  rise  with  me  at  last.'  "   . 

And  these  things  being  so,  let  us  cherish  the  thought,  when 
remorseless  death  crushes  our  fondest  hopes,  that  we  shall 
meet  the  good  again,  not  only  as  a  means  of  inciting  us  to  live 
more  like  them,  but  as  a  means  of  joyousness  of  spirit,  to  give 
a  new  sparkle  to  the  life-blood,  as  it  courses  through  the  veins, 
carrying  with  it  an  energy  and  healthfulness  which  shall  vital- 
ize the  body,  and  give  it  a  new  lease  of  existence. 


POISONOUS    MOULDS. 

MOULDED  bread,  meat,  cheese,  or  any  other  eatable,  is  a 
actual  poison,  whether  inhaled  or  eaten.  One  kind  of  moul 
causes  the  fatal  ship-fever.  The  mould  in  damp  cellars  causes 
various  grades  of  typhoid  fever,  diarrhoea,  dysentery,  <fec.  R|P 
cent  chemical  researches  and  microscopic  observations  seem 
to  show  that  miasm  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  mould,  and 
that  this  mould  is,  in  reality,  a  cloud  of  living  things,  each  too 
small  to  be  seen  by  the  naked  eye,  and  are  drawn  into  the 
lungs,  swallowed  with  the  saliva,  incorporated  with  the  food 
eaten,  and  by  being  absorbed  into  the  blood  are  sufficient  to 
cause  all  grades  of  deadly  fevers.  Elevated  or  dry  localities 
are  wholly  exempt. 


746  WAKEFULNESS. 


WAKEFULNESS. 

SOME  persons  cannot  go  to  sleep  for  hours  after  going  to 
bed  ;  others  wake  up  m  the  night,  and  toss  and  tumble  until 
near  morning,  when  they  fall  asleep  from  a  kind  of  exhaustion, 
and  do  not  wake  up  until  the  sun  is  high  in  the  sky  ;  such 
habits  can  be  broken  up,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  in  a  week,  by 
the  exercise  of  a  little  force  of  character;  if  the  individual 
does  not  possess  that,  he  is  of  no  earthly  account,  and  the 
next  time  he  goes  to  sleep  he  had  better  stay  there.  In 
nearly  every  case  the  discomfort  of  habitually  restless  nights 
arises  from  the  person  being  so  unfortunate  as  having  noth- 
ing to  do,  or  at  least  doing  nothing,  and  endeavoring  to  force 
more  sleep  on  Nature  than  she  wants ;  and  she  never  will  be 
forced  with  impunity  to  do  anything :  she  is  as  stubborn  as  a 
mule,  or  a  pig  in  a  poke.  The  sedentary  require  less  sleep 
than  the  active,  those  who  live  in-doors  less  than  those  who 
are  out  in  the  glorious  open  air.  Women  require  more  sleep 
than  men,  other  things  being  equal,  the  nervous  system  being 
more  active.  Few  persons  after  fifty  can  sleep  longer  than 
seven  hours,  unless  they  are  hard  out-door  workers  ;  healthy 
children  under  ten  ought  to  have  ten  hours  for  sleep  ;  school 
girls,  from  twelve  to  eighteen,  ought  to  sleep  at  least  nine 
hours.  But  from  various  causes  there  is  a  great  difference  in 
the  amount  of  sleep  required  by  different  persons ;  hence  each 
should  observe  for  himself  how  much  sleep  he  requires,  and 
arrange  to  give  nature  that  much  every  night ;  if  unusual 
exertions  are  made  any  day,  sleep  longer  the  night  following. 
If  kept  up  several  hours  later  than  usual,  on  chance  occasions, 
arrange  not  to  be  disturbed  in  any  way  next  morning,  and 
when  nature  wakes  up,  get  up,  and  do  not  sleep  any  during 
the  day,  but  go  to  bed  at  the  regular  hour,  and  the  increased 
soundness  of  sleep  for  that  night  will  make  up  for  the  loss. 

If  you  cannot  go  to  sleep  when  you  first  go  to  bed,  give 
orders  to  be  waked  up  at  daylight;  get  up  promptly;  do  not 
sleep  a  wink  during  the  day ;  go  to  bed  at  your  regular  time, 
with  directions  to  be  waked  up  as  before ;  in  a  week  you  will 
find  that  you  can  go  to  sleep  promptly;  but  then  be  careful  to 
get  up  as  soon  as  you  wake  in  the  mornings ;  thus  you  will 


OROWINQ   OLD  HAPPILY.  747 

soon  find  out  how  much  sleep  your  system  requires,  and  act 
accordingly  — always  avoid  sleeping  in  the  daytime;  for  if 
you  require  seven  hours'  sleep,  and  spend  that  much  in  sleep 
at  night,  whatever  time  you  spend  in  sleep  during  the  day 
must  be  deducted  from  that  seven  hours,  or  you  will  soon  be- 
come wakeful  again.  If  you  wake  up  in  the  night,  either  go 
to  bed  two  or  three  hours  later,  or  when  you  wake,  get  up, 
even  if  it  be  but  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  do  not  sleep 
a  moment  until  your  regular  hour  for  going  to  bed ;  and  if 
you  go  to  bed  regularly,  get  up  as  soon  as  you  wake,  and  do 
not  sleep  in  the  daytime,  you  will  find  out  in  less  than  a 
week  how  much  sleep  you  require  ;  then  act  accordingly.  Na- 
ture loves  regularity,  and  the  four  hours'  sleep  from  ten  to  two 
is  worth  six  hours  after  twelve  o'clock.  The"  great  rule  is, 
Retire  at  a  regular  early  hour,  and  get  up  always  as  soon  as 
you  wake,  if  it  is  daylight.  If  persons  have  force  of  will 
enough  to  keep  from  going  to  sleep  a  second  time,  it  is  great- 
ly better  to  remain  in  bed  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  after  waking 
up,  to  think  about  it,  and  enjoy  the  resting  of  that  kind  of 
feeling  of  pleasurable  tiredness  which  comes  over  us  on  wak- 
ing, especially  if  we  have  taken  more  exercise  than  usual  the 
previous  day,  or  have  been  kept  up  later. 


GROWING  OLD   HAPPILY. 

THERE  is  naturally  but  one  disease  —  that  of  old  age.  To 
leave  the  world  as  gently  as  go  out  the  embers  on  the  hearth, 
or  as  the  candle  in  its  socket,  without  pain,  or  shock,  or 
spasm,  — this  is  worth  taking  pains  for  !  Literally,  the  lot  is 
terrible  of  a  man  with  tottering  limbs,  and  gray  hairs,  dying 
by  piecemeal  from  racking  rheumatism,  from  torturing  gout, 
or  the  slow-eating  cancer  !  the  mind  all  the  while,  by  reason 
of  incessant  pain,  growing  morose,  querulous,  bitter,  and  athe- 
istic !  On  the  other  hand,  how  ineffably  beautiful  is  it  to 
arrive  at  a  hearty,  buoyant  old  age,  without  ache,  or  pain,  or 
sadness  —  sunshine  always  in  the  face,  gladness  in  the  eye  ; 
the  heart  meanwhile  welling  up  and  running  over  with  human 
sympathies  and  love  divine,  of  whom  "  my  mother  sang  "  so 


748  GROWING  OLD  HAPPILY. 

often,  in  the  clear,  sweet,  and  cheery  tones  of  youth  and 
health  ! 

"  The  day  glides  swiftly  o'er  their  head, 

Made  up  of  innocence  and  love, 
And  soft  and  silent  as  the  shade, 
Their  nightly  minutes  gently  move. 

"  Quick  as  their  thought  their  joys  come  on, 

But  fly  not  half  so  swift  away; 
Their  souls  are  ever  bright  as  noon, 
And  calm  as  summer  evenings  be." 

And  when  their  work  is  done,  their  journey  ended,  the  life  of 
time  melts  into  an  immortal  existence,  — 

"  As  fades  a  summer  cloud  away, 

As  sinks  a  gale  when  storms  are  o'er, 
As  gently  shuts  the  eye  of  day, 
As  dies  a  wave  along  the  shore." 

To  have  the  lamp  of  life  thus  go  out,  physically,  we  must  live 
regularly,  temperately,  actively ;  for  by  these  means  only  can 
the  great  human  clock  work  well  until  all  the  wheels  wear  out 
together,  and  all  cease  their  running  at  the  same  instant :  then 
there  is  no  shock,  no  pain,  no  torture,  and  scarce  a  perceptible 
struggle ;  so  that  the  moment  of  departure  can  be  noted  only 
by  the  most  scrutinizing  eye. 
READEB  !  MAY  SUCH  BE  YOUR  EXIT  AND  MINE. 


INDEX. 


Adulterations 639 

Age,  beautiful  old 397 

yAgencies,  destructive 728 

Agriculture 438 

Air  and  exercise 16 

Air  we  breathe 366 

Anal  itchings 444 

Annual  ailments 75 

Aphorisms,  physiological 573 

Apoplexy 620 

Appetite 186 

Appetite,  instinct  of. 317 

Apples 479 

Aristocracy,  the  dollar  and  blood.    ...  264 


Babies 489 

Backbone 593 

Bath,  Sir  Astley  Cooper's 37 

Bath,  a  lady's 38 

Bath-rooms 235 

Bath,  towel 39 

Bathing 270 

Bathing,  cold 371 

Beards 578 

Bible,  the 7 

Bible  and  materia  medica 142 

Biliousness 631 

Birds  of  the  wood 443 

Bites  and  stings,  to  cure 155 

Blood,  in  the 387 

Bodily  carriage v  337 

Bodily  endurance 354 

Boils 638 

Book,  the  poor  man's 284 

Bowels,  regulating  the 553 

Boys,  our 474 

Brain,  softening  of  the 384 

Brain  and  thought 644 

Brain  and  body  work 722 

Brandy  and  throat  disease 36 

Bread,  curiosities  of. .   533 

Breakfast,  early 465 

Breathing,  curiosities  of. 625 

Bronchitis  and  kindred  diseases 44 

Bulldogs 393 

Build,  where  shall  I  ? 650 


Cakes,  buckwheat 376 

Cancer 618 

Catarrh 473  i 


Cellars,  clean  your 238 

Cellars  in  dwelling-houses 660 

Chambers 667 

Character,  decision  of. 188 

Charms 732 

Children,  dirty 622 

Children  eating 402 

Children,  rearing. 595 

Chimneys,  smoky 673 

Cholera,  what  is 84 

Cholera,  moral  causes  of. 123 

Church,  how  to  leave 179 

Civilization  and  health 217 

Cleaning,  well  and  spring.  : 427 

Cleanliness •  .  .  261 

Clergyman,  the  joking 40 

Coffee,  substitutes  for -.  576 

Cold,  now  people  take 151 

Cold,  to  cure 174 

Colds,  neglecting 458 

Comfort 303 

Common  sense 340 

Constitutions  created 418 

Constitution,  hardening  the 177 

Consumption,  cause  of. 487 

Consumptives,  a  suggestion  to 645 

Contemplations,  healthful 200 

Coolings 411 

Corn  bread  and  constipation 121 

Corns 208 

Country,  living  in  the.  .    ...    .....  350 

Courage,  true 237 

Courteous,  be 189 

Courting 633 

Croupy  season 506 

Curiosity,  dangerous 501 


r> 

Dangers,  school 321 

Daughters,  our 264 

Daughters,  ruined 268 

Death,  avenues  of. 516 

Death,  cause  of. 242 

Death,  an  easy 360 

Death,  in-doors 640 

Death,  natural 166 

Death,  sudden 198 

Debt  and  death 156 

Dentistry 736 

Desserts 471 

Diarrhoea 716 

Dieting 696 

Digestion 300 

Dinners,  Sunday 212 

Diphtheria.     698 

749 


INDEX. 


\*  '  and  crime  

3°,3 
455 
706 
399 

H 

Habits,  childish,  bad  

738 
2N) 
3<7 

193 
493 
429 
4(>0 
306 
494 
198 
012 
725 
446 
432 
556 
11C 

307 

3d.' 

fjiseaKCO,  autumnal  

Hands,  chapped  

3V4 
Io5 
.-1 
7iO 
:*:> 

112 
109 
248 

11". 
107 

Disinfectants  

Headache,  nick  

Health,  dietin^  for  175, 

Drowuin0*  

Health,  effects  of  imagination  on.    .  .  . 
Health  and  house-hunting  
Health  and  wealth  

Drunkard,  the  

1  >y  sentery.  *  .  .  

Health,  wealth,  and  religion  

Dyspepsia  191, 

5'J'J 
550 
449 
2s2 
OKI 
650 
OS."> 
135 
178 
643 
2NJ 
389 
323 

551 
714 
•161 
648 
509 
223 
17fl 
342 

206 
419 
73 
606 

2«2 
454 
482 
69 
601 
82 
267 
425 
502 
423 
404 
396 

E 

Hints  for  the  travelling  seasons  

740 
398 
735 
305 

Eating,  philosophy  of.  

How  to  preach  effectively  

191 
277 
580 
22 
272 
273 
259 
173 
299 
566 

6»9 
233 
413 
213 
498 
518 
583 
554 
730 
190 
496 
442 
710 
614 
373 

Employments,  health  of.  

Hunger  

I 

Ice,  uses  of.     
Idiots  

Eyes  and  cold  water  

F 

Face  and  hands,  washing  the  

Fiill.'irii's,  popular  159, 

TSL 

Fantasies,  medical  

FarnuTH  and  citizens  

Feet,  attention  to  the  

Kitchen     

Feet,  cold  

JL, 

Feet,  odoriferous  

Feet  in  winter  time  

Food  the  l»est  physic  
Food  ior  cuttle.  

702 
632 
328 
106 
030 
629 
(V3-1 

Life,  aim  of.    

Food  run-  
Food  mid  drink     

Life  ^duration  of.  

Food,  digestibility  of.    

Food,  elements  of.   

Life,  occupations  of.    
Lite   trials  of     

Food,  preservation  of.    

28 
406 

Fruit,  hciilthlulness  of.  

122 

437 
415 
11? 

259 

25H 

729 
35 
27 

344 

:.:» 
742 
256 
491 

375 

0 

358 

Bf 

Gloved  to  death  

343 
293 
348 
747 
4<W 

Grow  beautiful      

Growing  old  happily  

Marriages,  early  

INDEX. 


263 
652 
297 
452 
652 
349 
289 
64C. 
244 
692 
204 
610 
240 
183 
705 
230 
733 
745 
590 

195 

Rent,  mental  

5'... 
023 
6f«t 
270 
433 
271 

•^H 

Hi? 

?OI 

Measles  mill  consumption  

Khcumutism  

9 

Sabbath  rest  

Milk  

Mind  the     

Mind  and  charcoal  
Miml,  equanimity  of.  ...    •  

School  children  
Scrofula  

Money,  how  to  lend  
Money  a  medicine  

Self-destroyers  
Self-medication  

Mortuary,  clerical  
Mother,  the  

Shoes,  winter  

Shoes,  rubber,  wearing  • 

Music  

2V 
Nails,  finger  

205 
50* 
341 
197 
301 
292 
24 
320 
209 
400 
222 
478 
727 
3V» 

Skatin<>-  

477 
311 
4->6 

Sleep  

NMit  nir  

Nursing  

279 
509 
390 

Sleep,  how  much  to  . 

o 

Old  age,  fatuity  of.  

560 
641 
620 
285 
274 
281 

507 
404 
253 
200 
251 
480 
642 
C81 
540 
155 
298 
228 
497 
178 
605 
558 
603 
220 
3)4 
679 
202 
539 

71 
347 

003 
704 
23 
2% 
405 

Soups,  poisonous  

Out-door  safety  

I* 

Pain  •  .  .  •    

Stable  

50t 
689 
309 
703 
324 
557 
210 
422 
58S 
210 
637 
485 
401 
7i5 
62N 
184 

469 
325 

3:i9 
46  > 
2U3 
607 
207 
511 
l.vj 
711 

Study,  hard  

Perspiration,  checked  

Suppers,  hearty  

Physical  cultivation  

Sugar,  buggy  

T 

Precautions  

Tea-drinking  

Presentiment,  a,  
Principles,  medical  

Teeth  of  children  

Thermometers  

R 

124 
47 
41 
2.5 
571 
47'J 
2M 
331 
689 
3'°'2 
73U 

JV        '       7'i    -tt     t'  

380 
743 
537 
470 

G~0 

Kecngnition  hereafter  
Inflection,  sad  
Regimen  
Keprovo,  how  to  

Tomntoes  and  melons  

Trees,  shade  
Trouble  kills  
Typhoid  

52 


INDEX. 


TJ 

Urination 574 

Useful,  make  yourself. 330 


Vaccination 598 

VegftariauiMin  and  ill  temper 327 

Ventilation,  church 624 

Victim,  the 450 


Wakefulnoss 746 

Walking  erectly 715 

Walls,  damp. 260 

Wanderers,  t  estless 495 

Water 663 

Water-closets  and  privies 679 


Water,  cold 107 

Water  conveniences 678 

Water  cure 352 

Water  pipes 605 

Way  to  be  safe 701 

Weather  and  wealth 734 

Well  done 403 

What  a  fool ! 717 

When  began  we  ? 530 

Whitlow 604 

Whitewashes 609 

Why  children  die 417 

Why  don't  he  die  ? 536 

Wife  worth  having 365 

Winter  rules 445 

Wrath,  bottled 409 


Youths,  weakly 408 


ID.  E.  ITLSK  &  CO 

PUBLISHERS, 
SPRINGFIELD,    MASS. 

Our  Publications  are  sold  only  by  Canvassing  Agents. 


AGENTS    of   many   years'  experience   find    our   works    as 
acceptable)  cheap,  and  rapid  selling  as  any  in 

the  field. 

Persons  wishing  to  engage  permanently,  professional  men  and 
students  during  their  vacations,  or  any  one,  male  or  female,  will 
find  it  to  their  interest  to  apply  for  terms  and  territory,  before 
engaging  elsewhere. 

We  do  not  advertise  that  Agents  can  make  twenty  or  thirty 
dollars  a  day  (for  that  we  do  not  believe),  but  with  diligence, 
and  courtesy  to  the  public,  we  think  Agents  can  do  as  well  with 
our  publications  as  with  any,  and  we  shall  continue  to  issue 
new  works  to  supply  the  demand. 

We  pay  liberal  Premiums  to  any  one  sending  us  Agents, 


"Mre  on  the  Hearth." 

DIXON'S  LOW-DOWN  GRATES, 


These  Grates  burn  hard  and  soft  coal,  wood,  peat  and  coke ;  and  can  be 
adapted  for  any  story  in  a  house. 


FOR  DESCRIPTIVE  CIRCULARS,  ADDRESS 

THOS.  S.  DIXON  &  SONS, 

No.    1324    Chestnut   Street, 

PHILADELPHIA,  PA, 


"  It  certainly  is  the  most  delightful  and  the  most  healthful  artificial  heat  in 
the  world  •  and  of  the  great  number  of  persons  who  have  been  Ind-iced  to  pur- 
chase the  Low- Down  Grates  of  DIXON  &  SONS,  Philadelphia,  we  have  not  known 
a  single  one,  who  at  the  end  of  five,  six  and  eight  years'  use,  does  not  continue 
to  be  delighted  with  it." 

DR.  HALL,  in  HaWt  Journal  of  HeaUh, 


'Chlefest  of  luxuries  Is  an  open  fire-place." 


IK  MARVEL. 


"In  one  room,  at  least,  in  every  house  there  should  be  the  exhilarating  air 
and  influence  of  an  open  fire." 

DR,  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 


zii  n  i  iii  i 


University  of  Camornja 
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